"Is that all? I thought it was a funeral or a wedding or something, an" I was wonderin". Just a li"l ride, huh? And where might you be a-going to ride to, if I may make so bold as to ask?"
"You can ask, of course," replied Racey, shrugging his wide shoulders and spreading his hands after the fashion of Telescope Laguerre.
"But that ain"t sayin" he"ll tell you," put in Jimmie. "Bet you he"s gonna go see that new hasher of Bill Lainey"s."
"No," denied the Kid, judicially, "not that lady. Even Racey"s arms ain"t long enough to reach round her. I--_Say_, one of these pies is a _raisin_ pie!"
"You can gimme that one," suggested Racey Dawson, glad of an opportunity to change the subject.
The Kid, his teeth sunk in the raisin pie, shook a decisive head and mumbled unintelligibly. He thrust the other pie toward his friend.
Racey Dawson rode away westward munching pie. And it was a very good pie, and would have brought credit to any cook. He regretfully ate the last crumb, and rolled a cigarette. He felt fairly full and at utter peace with the world. Why not? Wasn"t it a good old world, and a mighty friendly world despite the Harpes and Tweezys and Joneses that infested it? I should say so.
Racey Dawson inhaled luxuriously, pushed back his wide hat, and let the breeze ruffle his brown hair. He rubbed the back of one hand across his straight eyebrows, and stared across the range toward the distant hills that marked his goal. Which goal was the old C Y ranch-house at Moccasin Spring on Soogan Creek, where lived the Dales and their daughter Molly.
And as he looked at the hill and bethought him of what lay beyond it, he drew a Winchester from the scabbard under his left leg and made sure that he had not forgotten to load it. For Racey laboured under no delusion as to the danger that menaced not only his own existence but that of his friend Swing. He knew that their lives hung by a thread, and a thin thread at that. They were but two against many, and their position had not been aided by the string of uneventful days succeeding their advent at the Bar S. For their enemies were taking their time in the launching of their enterprise. And Racey had not expected this. It threw him off his balance somewhat. Certainly it worried him.
It was not humanly possible that Jack Harpe could be aware that Old Man Saltoun did not believe what Racey had told him. But he was acting as if he knew. Perhaps he was waiting till Nebraska Jones should be entirely well of his wound. That was possible, but not probable. Jack Harpe had not impressed Racey as a man who would allow his plans to be indefinitely held up for such a cause. There was no telling when Nebraska would be up and about. His recovery, thanks to past dissipations, had been exceedingly slow.
Again, perhaps the delay might be merely a detail of the plan Fat Jakey Pooley mentioned in his letter to Luke Tweezy, or it might be due to the more-than-watchful care the Dales and Morgans were taking of old Mr. Dale. Wherever the old gentleman went, some one of his relations went with him. Certainly no ill-wisher had been able to approach Mr. Dale (since his spree at McFluke"s) at any time. Mr.
Dale, to all intents and purposes, was impossible to isolate.
At any rate, whatever the reason, the fact remained that Harpe had not moved and showed no signs of moving. Mr. Saltoun, every time he met Racey, took special pains to ask his puncher how much twice six times two hundred was. Then Mr. Saltoun, without waiting for an answer, would walk off slapping his leg and cackling with laughter. Even Tom London was beginning to take the view that perhaps his father-in-law was in the right, after all.
"You been here near two months now, Racey," he had said that very morning, "and they ain"t anything happened yet."
"I"ve got four months to go," Racey had replied with a placidity he did not feel.
Now as he rode, his eyes closely scanning the various places in the landscape providing good cover for possible bushwhackers, he recalled what Loudon had said.
"I"ll show him all the happenstances he wants to see before I"m through," he said, aloud. "Something"s gonna happen. Something"s got to happen. Jack Harpe won"t let this slide. Not by a jugful."
The words were confident enough, but they were words that he had been in the habit of repeating to himself nearly every day for some time.
Perhaps they had lost some of their force. Perhaps--
"Twelve hundred dollars," mused Racey. "And the same for Swing. Six months" work for--h.e.l.l, it can"t turn out different! I know it can"t.
We"ll show "em all yet, won"t we, Cuter old settler?"
Cuter old settler waggled his ears. He was a companionable horse, never kicked human beings, and bucked but seldom.
"Yep," continued Racey, sitting back against the cantle, "she"s a long creek that don"t bend some"ers or other."
And then the creek that was his flow of thought shot round a bend into the broad and sparkling reaches of a much pleasanter subject than the one that had to do with Harpes and Tweezys and Joneses. After a time he came to where the pleasanter subject, on her knees, was weeding among the flowers that grew tidily round Moccasin Spring.
Baby-blue-eyes, low and lovely, cuddled down between tall columbines and orange wall-flowers. Side by side with the pink geranium of old-fashioned gardens the wild geranium nodded its lavender blooms in perfect harmony.
The subject, black-haired Molly Dale, rested the point of her hand-fork between two rows of ragged sailors and Johnny-jump-ups and lifted a pair of the clearest, softest blue eyes in the world in greeting to Racey Dawson.
"This is a fine time for you to be traipsing in," she told him, with a smile that revealed a deep dimple in each cheek. "I thought you promised to help me weed my garden to-day."
"I did," he returned, humbly, dismounting and sliding the reins over Cuter"s neck and head, "but you know how it is Sunday mornin"s, Molly.
There"s a lot to do round the ranch sometimes. Now, this mornin"--"
"I"ll bet," she interrupted, smoothing out the smile and frowning as severely as she was able. "I"d just tell a man that, I would. I would, indeed. I"m sure it must have taken you at least half-an-hour to shine those boots. Half-an-hour! More likely an hour. Why, I can see my face in them."
"And a very pretty face, too," said Racey, rising to the occasion. "If I owned that face I"d never stop looking at it myself. I mean--" He floundered, aghast at his own temerity.
But the lady smiled. "That"ll do," she cautioned him. "Don"t try to flirt with me. I won"t have it."
"I ain"t--" he began, and stopped.
Molly Dale continued to look at him inquiringly. But as he gave no evidence of completing the sentence, she lowered her gaze and resumed her weeding. Racey thought to have glimpsed a disappointed look in her eyes as she dropped her chin, but he could not be certain. Probably he had been mistaken. Why should she be disappointed? Why, indeed?
"Start in on that bed, Racey," she directed, nodding her head toward the columbines and wall-flowers. "There"s some of that miserable pusley inching in on the baby-blue-eyes and they"re such tiny things it doesn"t take much to kill them. And Lord knows I had a hard enough job persuading "em to grow in the first place."
"Wild things never cotton to living inside a fence," he told her.
"They"re like Injuns thataway--put "em in a house and they don"t do so well."
"Shucks, look at the Rainbow."
"Half-breed. There"s the difference, and besides the Rainbow ain"t lived in a house since she left the convent. She lives in a tepee same as her uncle and aunties."
"I don"t care," defended Molly, straightening on her knees to survey her garden. "Every single plant in my garden except the pink geraniums is wild. Look at those thimble-berry bushes round the spring, and the blue cama.s.s along the brook, and the squaw bushes round the house, and the squaw gra.s.s and p.u.s.s.y paws back of the clothes-lines. Some I transplanted, the rest I grew from seeds. And where will you find a better-looking garden?"
Racey sagged back on his heels and stared critically about him.
"Yeah," he drawled, nodding a slow head, "they do look pretty good.
Got to give you lots of credit. But those squaw bushes now--" He broke off, grinning.
"Oh, of course, you provoking thing!" cried she, irately. "Might know you"d pick on those squaw bushes. It is a mite too shady for "em where they are, but still they"re doing pretty well, considering. I"m satisfied--What"s that?"
"That" was a horseman appearing suddenly among the cottonwoods that belted with a scattering grove the garden and the spring. The horseman was Lanpher, manager of the 88 ranch. He was followed by another rider, a lean, swarthy individual with a smooth-shaven, saturnine face. Racey knew the latter by sight and reputation. The man was one Skeel and rejoiced in the nick-name of "Alicran." The furtive scorpion whose sting is death is not indigenous to the territory, but Mr.
Skeel had gained the appellation in New Mexico, a region where the tail-bearing insect may be found, and when the man left the Border for the Border"s good the name left with him.
"Oh, lookout! The bushes! The bushes! Don"t trample my thimble-berries!"
But Lanpher, heeding not at all Molly"s cries of warning, spurred his sweating horse through the thimble-berry growth, breaking down three shrubs, and splashed cat-a-corneredly across the spring, the brook, and several rows of flowers.
The garden looked as if a miniature cyclone had pa.s.sed that way.
Midway across the garden Lanpher"s horse halted--halted because a flying figure in chaps had appeared from nowhere and seized it by the rein. But the horse did more than halt. In obedience to a powerful jerk administered by the man in chaps the horse pivoted on its forelegs and slid its rider out of the saddle and deposited him a-sprawl and face downward among the flowers.
Lanpher arose, snarling, to face a levelled sixshooter. It did not signify that Racey had not drawn the weapon. He was perfectly capable of shooting through the bottom of his holster and Lanpher knew it. And Racey knew that he knew it.
"Get out of this garden!" ordered Racey. "Take yore friend with you,"
he added, tossing the horse"s bridle to Lanpher. "And if I were you I"d walk a heap careful between the rows. I just wouldn"t go a-busting any more of these posies."
Lanpher went. He went carefully. He was followed quite as carefully by Racey Dawson.
When Lanpher was free of the neat rows he looked up venomously into the face of Alicran Skeel who had meticulously ridden round the garden.