Down at the Alcazar he found the three riders who had deserted Matlock overnight. "I"m taking charge of the C Bar on the first, boys," he said simply, "and I"d like you to stay on with me if you will. There"s going to be a clean-up and a new deal. I"ll play square, and you"re all good hands. What d"ye say?"
The three looked interrogatively at each other and then Reddy McVey, the man who had taken the initiative the night before, said, "I reckon we"ll stay."
"That"s good! Your pay will go right along without any docking and I want you to go back to the ranch after we"ve had a drink, and finish up your corral building. And you might tell all the other boys that I won"t make any changes--unless I have to. Sabe?"
They grinned their full understanding of the underlying significance of that qualifying clause, and Red a.s.sured him that the rest of the outfit would stay. "They"re all good boys ef they are a leetle free on the bit," he confided. "An" they"ve only been obeying orders." Ken nodded his comprehension and the deal was properly ratified.
Over at the post office Williams was frankly exultant. "Best move ever made on the C Bar," he swore. "That tenderfoot has more savvy than I giv" him credit for. He"s a sandy cuss, too. I was keepin" cases on him las" night and he sh.o.r.e panned out good. Looks a heap more like his mam than he does like th" ole man; reckon that"s why I didn"t get onto the brand quicker. There"s good leather in your new boss, Ken."
"Kem in yere this mawnin"," continued the loquacious old fellow, "an"
says--fust crack outer th" box--"What"s th" name o" the feller who sits next to me las" night; the one who was waitin" fer Matlock to make a break?" er words to thet effect. "How d"ye guess it?" I axes, bein" some took aback--fer I didn"t think he was wise ter the play. "Will ye tell me his name, man!" sez he, kinder impatient; "I"m in a hurry." Then I give him your handle an" bymeby he twisted your pedigree outer me, too.
Not that he axes me any questions ter speak of, but somehow I slops over without thinkin" an" he listens sharp. "You"re a friend o" hisn?" he says, quiet like. "Well, I don"t wonder none. That"s a man!" sez he. "An he"s going to be my manager if I can fix it. I"m Carter, o" ther C Bar!"
"Say I, "th" h.e.l.l ye are! I knowed ole Bob Carter afore ye was earmarked. You don"t look none like him." But his jaws snaps amazin".
"My father is daid," he whips out, "but I am Robert Carter all the same." I axes his pardon an" he hikes out on your trail. An" I sez to myself, he"s some man, too!"
Dougla.s.s going out encountered a lady just entering the store. As he stepped aside to allow her pa.s.sage-way through the narrow door, their eyes met momentarily and she flushed slightly at the unconscious boldness of his look. Yet, curiously enough, she took no offense thereat, and turned around as old Williams bawled out, "Hey, there!
Dougla.s.s. Come back yere; I"v got a letter fer you I overlooked yisteday."
Out of the tail of his eye the man saw that the woman was young, dressed quietly yet in exquisite taste, and that she was extremely good to look at. She was evidently a stranger, yet there was something intangibly familiar about her features. It was not until that night that he traced the resemblance to Carter, when he knew immediately that this was the sister of whom his employer had spoken. And although none knew better than he the disparity of their social planes, he dropped off to sleep wishing that her stay on the ranch would be indefinitely prolonged, for, next to a horse he deemed a woman the most creditable and handsome of divine creations, and beauty he adored both in the concrete and abstract. It would be very pleasant and agreeable to come in contact occasionally with this extremely pretty girl; it would ameliorate the coa.r.s.e, hard routine of his work just as the finding of a cl.u.s.ter of mountain heart"s-ease had often before dispelled the gloom of a hard day"s ride. His thought of her was purely impersonal as yet. He slept dreamlessly the sleep of healthy, heart-whole youth and when he waked with the dawn he had practically forgotten her existence.
And the woman? Well, after the fashion of woman, she thought more than once of the bronzed young fellow who had looked at her so audaciously.
As she asked for her mail old Williams had volunteered some interesting information.
"So you are Bob Carter"s leetle gal, the one he used to brag on so much to the boys, eh? Well, durn my pictur", if he didn"t have good reason to! You look like your mammy, Miss, and she were the puttiest filly that ever run over this range! An" as good as she were purty! I mind oncet--"
and there followed an interminable string of reminiscences very interesting to the girl but of no moment to this story.
"That feller thet jest went out is your brother"s new foreman, Ken Dougla.s.s, the sandiest galoot an" best cowman on this range," he concluded. "Of course he didn"t know who you was or he"d a spoke to you, "deed he would! Ken"s real polite." The girl smiled at his earnest a.s.surance and said gently: "I am quite sure of it."
"Betcher life!" affirmed the old man enthusiastically. "He"s too da--er, hem! too much polite to some cattle as doesn"t desarve it, accordin" to my way o" thinkin". Why las" night he actoolly waited for a feller to begin killin" of him before drawin" his own gun! It waz plumb downright keerless o" him, an" some day he"ll get it good an" plenty ef he don"t watch out!"
Then, seeing the look of white consternation in the girl"s face, he shut up like a clam, saying only that Ken could "take a plenty good keer o"
hisself, when he wanted to." She went away, wondering what manner of man that could be who had not his own personal welfare constantly in mind, that being proverbially the first law of nature. Her wonder increased when, on casually mentioning her chance encounter with him, Mrs. Vaughan had acquainted her with as much of Dougla.s.s"s record as was common property. It was so new to her, so abnormal in every particular when compared with her own code of ethics, that she was a little bewildered.
She was shocked not a little at Mrs. Vaughan"s frank enjoyment of the watering-trough episode and the ensuing bravado of the dare-devil fellow who had deliberately entered the lion"s den to intensify the indignity put upon her brother"s outfit. Yet somehow the indomitable courage of the man appealed to her strongly; all women love personal valor and this was the most exaggerated example of it that had ever come to her notice.
She distinctly disapproved of the motive of it, but she blushed to think how glad she was that he had come safely out of the jaws of death with colors flying.
Strangely enough, she appreciated the Alcazar incident to the full, and at her brother"s graphic relation evinced no surprise. She could readily understand this kind of courage and she only commended his tact. "He was master of the situation," she remarked, with an insight into the facts astonishing in one who had never in all her life heard a word spoken in anger; "and it is absurd to think that he was ignorantly exposing himself to inevitable death. He would have shot first in any event--and I think he would have hit." A conclusion so prescient that her brother gasped with astonishment.
"I guess your estimate of him tallies with mine, sis," he said teasingly. "I fell in love with him at first sight."
"How perfectly absurd!" she returned, with a rebuking hauteur, and deftly changing the subject proceeded to regale Mrs. Vaughan with the details of New York"s latest operatic sensation. But she relented enough to clasp her soft white arm about her brother"s neck just before retiring that night and whisper:
"It was very lovely and n.o.ble of him to try and send you out of danger.
Oh! Bobbie, what would I have done if--"
Carter kissed her tenderly. "It was the whitest thing I ever saw, Gracie, and I want you to try and help me make it up to him. The man is a gentleman, too, no matter what his past has been. And with your aid we will keep him such. Besides, our fortune is in his hands to all intents and purposes and something tells me we are going to owe him much in the days to come."
It may have been telepathy, and then again it may have only been coincidence; but certain it is that at the very moment Grace Carter knelt beside her little white bed, Ken Dougla.s.s sitting on the edge of his bunk took from about his neck a slender gold chain to which was attached a locket, opened it with trembling hands and laid his lips with infinite tenderness and reverence on the mouth of the sweet-faced woman pictured therein.
"Oh! Mother," he prayed, "help me to make good!"
CHAPTER IV
IN THE MIDST OF ALARUMS
Luxuriously hammocked in the delightful cool of the broad veranda surrounding three sides of the C Bar ranch house, Grace Carter lay dreamily watching the shadow-dance on the slope of the fast purpling range. Outside, the sun devils were whirling maliciously, here and there kicking up a dust-spout in the wake of the sadly-tormented breezlets which foolishly ventured out in that July inferno. Overhead the sun was herding his cloud flocks to their fold in the bra.s.sy west, wearily dipping out of sight momentarily amidst their billowy fleeces. There was an intolerable shimmer on the low-lying adobe flats to the east, and the sea of alfalfa to the north drooped flaccidly in the furnace heat.
Her neglected novel lay limply on a bamboo tabour at her side and an open letter lay where it had fallen unrecked on the veranda floor. On the wide rail shelf blazed a glory of multi-colored cacti artistically potted in harmoniously contrasting cool-gray jars. A luxuriant wistaria at the porch angle behind her supplied the requisite foil for as perfect a picture as ever filled the eye of mortal man, and Dougla.s.s, coming noiselessly through the fetlock-deep dust of the driveway, reined up his tired horse in eager admiration.
The girl, lulled to sleep by the languor of the hour, was very good to look, upon and his eyes drank in her beauty greedily. Her hands, locked together under the shapely head, were hidden in the wealth of golden brown hair that somehow had escaped its fastenings and lay in an aureole of glory about her delicately-chiseled face. The wide sleeves of the thin lavender-tinted silk kimono had fallen away from her arms, revealing their soft rounded contour and exquisite modeling. The clinging stuff of her filmy gown betrayed every perfection of outline, and peeping over one edge of the hammock was just a ravishing suspicion of silk-stockinged foot and ankle, dainty as a child"s. Her skin, tanned golden tawny to the limit of the sun"s daily caress, betrayed its true coloring in the creamy white hollow of her uncovered throat, where the treacherous fabric had failed in its trust. The lips, not too full but rather of a gentle firmness, were slightly parted, revealing well-shaped teeth, and the eyelashes and brows were long and beautifully arched.
As he sat unconsciously glowering at her, she moved slightly and the kimono slipped to one side, exposing the bodice of thin stuff beneath.
Through its folds the rise and fall of her bosom were distinctly perceptible. He whirled his horse with a deep-chested oath and rode unseen to the stables. Taking something from his saddle-roll, he tiptoed back to the veranda and without once looking at the sleeping girl laid it on the open novel.
Waking an hour later, she chanced to look casually at the tabour. With a little cry of pleasure she picked up the heart-shaped bit of moist moss with its embedded cl.u.s.ter of mountain heart"s-ease and her eyes were very soft as she laid it to her lips. There was no uncertainty as to their source; she knew that these were the first-offerings of the season, procurably only in the hardly penetrable canons of the range, more than twenty dusty miles away, and she felt very grateful. She wore them on her corsage that night at dinner and later, coming on him smoking his post-prandial pipe under the stars, thanked him graciously.
As he muttered the conventional commonplaces of depreciation, his gleaming eyes were riveted for a moment on the flowers. Something in the intensity of his glance struck her like a blow; she paled and instinctively covered the blossoms with both hands. Instantly her mind reverted to her afternoon"s siesta and her cheeks flamed with consciousness. She was far from unsophistication; she had seen men look so before but never with a similar acceleration of her heart-beats, never with this fierce resentment which now coursed though her whole being. She was quivering with a sense of vague outrage and her breath came fast and hard. Then with the unaccountability of the unfathomable feminine, she deliberately detached one of the dainty blooms and, standing with the filmy laces on her bosom brushing against his chest, deftly fastened it on the lapel of his coat. After all, the man had ridden far that day for her pleasure, and she smiled inscrutably as she recalled, on retiring that night, how his hands had clenched and his breast heaved when she had given him the flower. The rest of the violets were sadly wilted now and she threw them out of the window with a sudden impatient anger.
But an hour later a great horned owl, watching from a fence post the moonlit sward in front of the veranda in hopes of a possible mouse for his belated supper, hooted his contemptuous derision of another white-robed hunter groping in the shadows. And over at the bunkhouse a man with self-revilement was fumbling with a spray of heart"s-ease and looking into vacancy.
When she came down to breakfast the next morning Dougla.s.s was already far out on the range. He had thrown his whole heart and soul into his work and the effect was already visible to the most casual observer. The ranch grounds had been thoroughly policed, all the halting projects of Matlock"s regime had been spurred to finality, and cleanliness, method and order had replaced the previous chaos and squalor of the C Bar.
Everything radiated the new manager"s virility and energy. The renovated ditches were glistening bank full with their life-giving floods; the alfalfa and grain fields, now properly kept and irrigated, were billowy seas of emerald fore-promise; everything betokened activity and thrift.
In three short months he had wrought wonders with the really excellent material at hand and the C Bar was fast regaining its old-time prestige as the best-ordered ranch west of the Divide.
Carter was openly enthusiastic over the wisdom of his choice of managers, a wisdom which he shrewdly supplemented by giving Dougla.s.s full sway in the conduct of affairs. At the latter"s suggestion, he went East in June to secure certain necessary machinery, and the letter which had lain beneath her hammock the previous day was one written to Grace by her brother announcing his intention to have their mother accompany him on his return. The girl, interested by the novelty of her new environment, had elected to remain on the ranch, laughingly a.s.serting that it was a precautionary measure in her brother"s behalf, as she was sure Dougla.s.s had designs on the picturesque old ranch house and would tear down and rebuild it if not restrained by her presence.
The real truth was that she knew in his loyal respect for her he would abstain from excesses in which he might be tempted to indulge in the absence of that restraint. She was not quite sure of the moral fort.i.tude of this erratic young man, and even temporary interference with his work was a contingency calamitous to the C Bar interests. Up to last night she had felt only a great self-complacency over the result; but this morning, toying with her usually much-relished berries and cream, she was obsessed by the insistent thought that her self-congratulation was, after all, a trifle premature. The longer she reflected, the more she regretted that she had not gone back East with her brother. Not that she was in the slightest degree apprehensive of any untoward futurity; it was only that a new and unexpected factor had intruded itself into her already perfected scheme for the restoration of her brother"s fortune--and the reclamation of Ken Dougla.s.s.
Women are usually creatures of one idea, and she was no exception to the general rule; her whole mentality had been concentrated on this one achievement, and here at the very outset the fair fabric of her dreams was crumbling. She was oppressed with a sense of impending defeat that grew more and more disquieting as she recalled the stories she had heard of his indomitable will and pertinacity of purpose. She had been much impressed by a remark made by old Hank Williams on the morning of their first encounter, "Ken allus gits what he goes after!"
At the time she deemed it a very grand, almost heroic attribute, but just now it was fraught with a new significance. Something in her cogitations sent the blood to her face, then it receded, leaving her pale. She pushed the untasted food away impatiently and rose from the table. Going swiftly to her room, she took from between the leaves of her diary a cl.u.s.ter of withered flowers and stepped to the open window.
In the very act of their contemptuous casting away she hesitated irresolutely, looked at them once more compa.s.sionately and replaced them in the morocco-bound booklet. Then with an air of renewed determination she returned to her breakfast and ate everything comestible in sight.
That night when Dougla.s.s returned, he bore in his arms a tiny antelope kid which he laughingly entrusted to her tender mercies. In his ride over the range he had come upon one of the pitiful little tragedies common to the great Outdoors with its unending struggle of the weak against the strong and merciless. In a little hollow of the foothills its mother, hamstrung by a pair of wolves and exhausted by her gallant fight against the inevitable, was making a last frantic effort to defend her offspring cowering between her feet. The revolver flashed twice vengefully and then a third time mercifully, for the poor doe"s condition was hopeless. But of this third shot Dougla.s.s said nothing to Miss Carter, simply saying that the doe had succ.u.mbed to her injuries.
Neither did he deem it advisable to tell her that with the economy and thrift inseparable from plainsmen, he had sent the carca.s.s of the martyred mother to one of his outlying camps to eke out its larder, and so save the otherwise necessary sacrifice of a valuable yearling for camp meat. Nor did he mention the fact that this had occurred quite early in the afternoon, necessitating his "packing" the helpless kid about on his saddle for many weary miles.
The girl"s eyes had filled at his simple recital and she cooed a.s.suringly to the kid, which nestled contentedly in her arms. But something in her eyes and about her lips as he threw the wolf pelts at her feet caused the man to look at her curiously. He had seen that expression once before on the face of the wife of the dead sheepman when some one had told her of the finding of a C Bar rider with a load of buckshot through his heart some weeks after the a.s.sa.s.sination of her husband. There had been no over-officious zeal displayed by the authorities in their attempts to fix the responsibility of the man"s death, despite the fact that the sheepman"s son possessed one of the only three shotguns in the county, the deceased being reputedly a "bad man" and notoriously the creature of Matlock. He it was who had a.s.sisted in the fleecing of poor Braun, and the general consensus of opinion was that "he only got what was coming to him!" The code of the range is as drastic as it is simple.
"It"s up to you now to mother this goat, Miss Grace," he said whimsically; "I"ll send a man in to Tin Cup to-morrow for a gunnysackful of any pap-maker you nominate. We"ve got to a.s.sume the responsibility of him, his mother having come to grief on your demesne. When you are ready to christen him I"ll get Red to stand G.o.dfather for him--that is, if you have no other preferred sponsor in mind."
The girl looked up quickly; his tone seemed a bit patronizing and to her mind altogether too familiar. It was an opportune time to inaugurate a new order of things which all day she had been formulating.
"I shall name him now," she said, icily. "He shall be known as Buffo and you are his sponsor."
"Buffo--a buffoon!" He laughed a little constrainedly. "Well, I think the name is appropriate. He is a fool and so was his mother before him.