For nearly an hour he kept her at the piano, and when at last he let her stop playing he seemed a man transformed.
"You have given me a great pleasure, a very great pleasure, Miss Messiter," he thanked her warmly, his Western idiom sloughed with his villainy for the moment. "It has been a good many months since I have heard any decent music. With your permission I shall come again."
Her hesitation was imperceptible. "Surely, if you wish." She felt it would be worse than idle to deny the permission she might not be able to refuse.
With perfect grace he bowed, and as he wheeled away met with a little shock of remembrance the gaze of his cousin. For a long moment their eyes bored into each other. Neither yielded the beat of an eyelid, but it was the outlaw that spoke.
"I had forgotten y"u. That"s strange, too because it was for y"u I came.
I"m going to take y"u home with me.
"Alive or dead?" asked the other serenely.
"Alive, dear Ned."
"Same old traits cropping out again. There was always something feline about y"u. I remember when y"u were a boy y"u liked to torment wild animals y"u had trapped."
"I play with larger game now--and find it more interesting."
"Just so. Miss Messiter, I shall have to borrow a pony from y"u, unless--" He broke off and turned indifferently to the bandit.
"Yes, I brought a hawss along with me for y"u," replied the other to the unvoiced question. "I thought maybe y"u might want to ride with us."
"But he can"t ride. He couldn"t possibly. It would kill him," the girl broke out.
"I reckon not." The man from the Shoshones glanced at his victim as he drew on his gauntlets. "He"s a heap tougher than y"u think."
"But it will. If he should ride now, why--It would be the same as murder," she gasped. "You wouldn"t make him ride now?"
"Didn"t y"u hear him order his hawss, ma"am? He"s keen on this ride.
Of course he don"t have to go unless he wants to." The man turned his villainous smile on his cousin, and the latter interpreted it to mean that if he preferred, the point of attack might be shifted to the girl.
He might go or he might stay. But if he stayed the mistress of the Lazy D would have to pay for his decision.
"No, I"ll ride," he said at once.
Helen Messiter had missed the meaning of that Marconied message that flashed between them. She set her jaw with decision. "Well, you"ll not.
It"s perfectly ridiculous. I won"t hear of such a thing."
"Y"u seem right welcome. Hadn"t y"u better stay, Ned?" murmured the outlaw, with smiling eyes that mocked.
"Of course he had. He couldn"t ride a mile--not half a mile. The idea is utterly preposterous."
The sheepman got to his feet unsteadily. "I"ll do famously."
"I won"t have it. Why are you so foolish about going? He said you didn"t need to go. You can"t ride any more than a baby could chop down that pine in the yard."
"I"m a heap stronger than y"u think."
"Yes, you are!" she derided. "It"s nothing but obstinacy. Make him stay," she appealed to the outlaw.
"Am I my cousin"s keeper?" he drawled. "I can advise him to stay, but I can"t make him."
"Well, I can. I"m his nurse, and I say he sha"n"t stir a foot out of this house--not a foot."
The wounded man smiled quietly, admiring the splendid energy of her.
"I"m right sorry to leave y"u so unceremoniously."
"You"re not going." She wheeled on the outlaw "I don"t understand this at all. But if you want him you can find him here when you come again.
Put him on parole and leave him here. I"ll not be a party to murder by letting him go."
"Y"u think I"m going to murder him?" he smiled.
"I think he cannot stand the riding. It would kill him."
"A haidstrong man is bound to have his way. He seems h.e.l.l-bent on riding. All the docs say the outside of a hawss is good for the inside of a man. Mebbe it"ll be the making of him."
"I won"t have it. I"ll rouse the whole countryside against you. Why don"t you parole him till he is better?"
"All right. We"ll leave it that way," announced the man. "I"d hate to hurt your tender feelings after such a pleasant evening. Let him give his parole to come to me whenever I send for him, no matter where he may be, to quit whatever he is doing right that instant, and come on the jump. If he wants to leave it that way, we"ll call it a bargain."
Again the rapier-thrust of their eyes crossed. The sheepman was satisfied with what he saw in the face of his foe.
"All right. It"s a deal," he agreed, and sank weakly back to the couch.
There are men whose looks are a profanation to any good woman. Ned Bannister, of the Shoshones, was one of them. He looked at his cousin, and his ribald eyes coasted back to bold scrutiny of this young woman"s charming, buoyant youth. There was Something in his face that sent a flush of shame coursing through her rich blood. No man had ever looked at her like that before.
"Take awful good care of him," he sneered, with so plain an implication of evil that her clean blood boiled. "But I know y"u will, and don"t let him go before he"s real strong."
"No," she murmured, hating herself for the flush that bathed her.
He bowed like a Chesterfield, and went out with elastic heels, spurs clicking.
Helen turned fiercely on her guest. "Why did you make me insist on your staying? As if I want you here, as if--" She stopped, choking with anger; presently flamed out, "I hate you," and ran from the room to hide herself alone with her tears and her shame.
CHAPTER 14. FOR THE WORLD"S CHAMPIONSHIP
The scene on which Helen Messiter"s eyes rested that mellow Fourth of July was vivid enough to have interested a far more jaded mind than hers. Nowhere outside of Cattleland could it have been duplicated.
Wyoming is spa.r.s.ely populated, but the riders of the plains think nothing of traveling a hundred miles in the saddle to be present at a "broncobusting" contest. Large delegations, too, had come in by railroad from Caspar, Billings, Sheridan, Cheyenne and a score of other points, so that the amphitheatre that looked down on the arena was filled to its capacity.
All night the little town had rioted with its guests. Everything was wide open at Gimlet b.u.t.te. Saloons were doing a land-office business and gambling-houses coining money. Great piles of gold had pa.s.sed to and fro during the night at the roulette wheel and the faro table. But with the coming of day interest had centered on the rough-riding contest for the world"s championship. Saloons and dance halls were deserted, and the universal trend of travel had been toward the big grand stands, from which the sport could be best viewed.
It was afternoon now. The preliminaries had been ridden, and half a dozen of the best riders had been chosen by the judges to ride again for the finals. Helen was wonderfully interested, because in the six who were to ride again were included the two Bannister cousins, her foreman, McWilliams, the young man "Texas," whom she had met the day of her arrival at Gimlet b.u.t.te, and Tom Sanford, who had last year won the championship.
She looked down on the arena, and her heart throbbed with the pure joy of life. Already she loved her West and its picturesque, chap-clad population. Their jingling spurs and their colored kerchiefs knotted round sunburned necks, their frank, whole-hearted abandon to the interest of the moment, led her to regard these youths as schoolboys.
Yet they were a hard-bitten lot, as one could see, burned to a brick-red by the untempered sun of the Rockies; with muscles knit like steel, and hearts toughened to endure any blizzard they might meet. Only the humorous wrinkles about the corners of their eyes gave them away for the cheerful sons of mirth that they were.
"Bob Austin on Two-Step," announced the megaphone man, and a little stir eddied through the group gathered at the lane between the arena and the corral.