CHAPTER VI—VERY ADROIT ROCK
Some minutes later he heard her stirring in the house. The sun grows hot early on the plains in midsummer. Rock had planted himself on the porch steps, in the shade, debating his next move. Should he ride on about his business? Logically, yes. He had a definite task to perform. It was time he set about it. He was on the ground. This was only an incident, a happening by the way. Yet his mind was full of this woman and child, alone on a ranch in the wilderness. The girl had said there were no other men. But this ranch and equipment spelled men and stock. It was more than the cabin of a settler striving for a foothold and security in a virgin land. A woman with a three-year-old baby had no business alone on a ranch in this waste, without a man in the background.
That problem—which was more a state of feeling than a problem, Rock knew—was solved for him in unexpected fashion. He rose at last and entered the house, specifically to ask her if there was anything else he could do before he departed.
The girl had the child in a high chair and was giving the youngster her breakfast. Silently she poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Rock. When he drank it she said:
“Come outside. I want to talk to you.”
Rock followed her to the porch.
“You told me last night you were a stock hand in search of occupation. Do you want to go to work for me?”
Rock liked her directness. His mind was quick to grasp possibilities. Work to Rock meant activity on the range He was next door to the Maltese Cross. Two birds had been killed before with one stone. Still, he wasn’t fond of mysteries that involved sudden death. He liked to know where he was going when he took a new trail.
“I’d as soon ride range here as anywhere,” he said. “It’s immaterial to me who I work for, so long as it’s my kind of work.”
“Are you one of these stock hands that considers it beneath his dignity to work for any outfit with less than ten thousand head of cattle?” she asked, with a comical note of asperity.
“Well, no,” he laughed. “Hardly so finicky as that. If you’ve got a rider’s job for me, consider me on the pay roll. Only, I’d like to know, if I’m going to work for you, whether I’m likely to find myself being buried some morning at sunrise—and why?”
“Wait a minute,” she said. She turned back into the house. In a second she was back with a hat on and two shiny tin pails.
“Come down to the stable with me, and we’ll talk this over while I milk. I was in such a state last night that I forgot the cows. Will you saddle up and bring them in out of the pasture?”
Rock drove two amiable-looking red cows from the far end of a small pasture to the corral. The girl tied both to the fence and sat down beside one on a low stool.
“Can you milk?” she asked, with the faintest shadow of a smile.
“Never did,” he answered truthfully.
“It’s considered woman’s work, I suppose,” she replied. “But even the wild and woolly cowboy, I notice, likes real milk and cream and butter. I don’t want you to milk cows, though. I’m not running a dairy. I have about eight hundred cattle scattered around here.”
“Your ranch outfit looks like about eight thousand,” Rock remarked.
“We had more than eight thousand when we came here,” she said. “That is why the house is big and the stable. My father drove three trail herds in here from the Pecos. But we lost most of them.”
“Oh, I see,” Rock commented.
“So, as I said, I have about eight hundred cattle on the range. I have a rider with the Maltese Cross round-up. I need another rider on the ranch.”
“But if you keep a rep with the Cross,” Rock interpolated, “does it matter if your stock does scatter considerable? The outfit would brand the calves and ship your beef as long as you supply a man and a string of horses.”
“Yes and no,” she said. “I see you know range work. I suppose what you say is true. Only I have reasons for handling cattle in my own way. But that’s all beside the point. What you want to know is whether you’ll be expected to step into a dead man’s boots and take the risk of getting shot for some reason or other, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Rock admitted. “I have no hankering to inherit a private war along with a forty-dollar job.”
“It’ll be fifty if you work for me,” she said. “There may be a risk. Not if you can be around here and work for me, without getting sentimental and jealous. That was what got Doc killed, I believe. I’m sure it was.”
Perhaps Rock looked his curiosity and surprise. The girl stood up. She had worked, as she talked, and finished milking the first cow.
“I had better explain a little,” she said calmly. “As I said, four years ago we came in here with nearly nine thousand cattle and a dozen riders in our outfit. I was eighteen then. I had just finished school. Our first winter here was a bad one—a terrible winter of hard frost and deep snow and storms. In the spring a round-up out two months gathered less than five hundred cattle in our brand. Betty was born that winter, and mamma died. The next summer a horse fell on my father, injured his back, so that he was a helpless cripple for nearly a year. Then he died. He left all there was to me and Betty. I have full control of everything until she comes of age. So I have managed here ever since. Mostly with one man, sometimes with two.”
So that was that. The dead man was a range rider, not a husband, and the baby was a sister. She was a level-headed, plucky girl to run a shoe-string outfit by herself. Yet he suspected that in this man’s country, men would make it easy for this capable and determined young person. Rock’s interest quickened.
“Wonder you didn’t sell out and go back to your folk,” he suggested.
“I have none—at least none that I care much about,” she replied. “And how much would I get for five or six hundred cattle? A few thousand dollars. The ranch isn’t salable. Who would pay money for a ranch, when land and water can be had anywhere for taking? Why should I sell out? I know cattle. This is a new country, a good range. We may not have another hard winter in a lifetime. It just happened. The old trappers and the Indians never saw a winter like that. Every four years my cattle will double. After a while it will make Betty and me independent. Why should I sell out? What would I do? Go to some town and be a clerk in a store?”
The vehemence in her voice made Rock smile.
“Oh, you got the right idea,” he admitted. “You’re working on the same principle that has built up every big outfit in the country. Only, it’s sort of unexpected in a woman no bigger than a minute.”
“Please understand me clearly,” she said, with a peremptory note in her curiously musical voice. “I don’t need any sympathy from anybody. I know what I’m doing, and I’m doing very well here. I want any one who works for me to work on exactly the same basis as he would work for any cow outfit. I don’t want any of this ‘That’s all right, little girl, we’ll see you through,’ business. That’s mostly what got Doc Martin killed, I suspect. Every man who works for me gets the idea that he’s in love with me.”
“Why blame ’em for that?” Rock interrupted.
“It embarrasses me. I’ve fired two or three for getting mushy. I don’t want that sort of thing. Do you think you can ride for me without getting sentimental—without presently getting the attitude that it’s your duty and privilege to protect me from every man in the country except yourself?”
Rock’s amused smile faded.
“Miss—— I don’t think I got your name.” He stopped.
“Nona Parke. The baby’s name is Betty,” she supplied promptly.
“Well, then, Miss Parke,” Rock said a little stiffly, “I can assure you that if I do draw wages from you I’ll try to earn them without making a bid either for your gratitude or your affection.”
Nona Parke’s gray eyes rested on his for a second with cool appraisement.
“You talk like a man with some sense. If you can handle horses and cattle the way you handle the English language, you ought to be useful.”
“You’re getting too personal,” Rock said rudely. “Tell me about this shooting. That’s what I want to know before I decide whether I want to make myself the same kind of a target. I have ambitions to live and do well in the world, myself.”
“Now you’re getting offended,” she reproached. “And I’m only trying to be frank and have things understood. You can’t imagine what a nuisance men can be sometimes. Doc worked for me ever since dad died. He was a good man. But he persisted in wanting to love me. I let him go once and then took him on again. He promised to behave himself. But he wouldn’t. He was jealous. He couldn’t bear other men coming here to see me. He stirred up trouble for himself with Elmer Duffy, the boss of the Seventy Seven outfit. I am fairly sure that Elmer shot Doc yesterday afternoon.”
She said this reluctantly, but with an earnestness that convinced Rock she really believed it. To him it seemed rather simple. He had seen men quarrel over women before.
“Elmer, I suppose, is a victim, too,” Rock commented. “Was he inclined to be jealous of a good-looking fellow like Doc Martin being in your company all the time?”
“Yes; that’s about it.” She sighed. “It sounds horrid, but it’s true. I’m quite sure Duffy was a little afraid of Doc. Doc had a quick temper, and he was supposed to be rather deadly. I don’t know how he got that reputation, because I never knew of him having trouble with anybody in this country.”
“And you think they met and shot it out around the bend?” Rock queried.
“No.” She replied soberly. “I think Doc was ambushed. There was only one shot. He had been mean and arbitrary with Elmer Duffy the last time they met. In fact, he threatened him and told him never to set foot on this ranch when I was here alone.”
“Listen, Miss Parke,” Rock said positively. “I know something about Elmer Duffy, myself. I’ll confess that I don’t like his style with men very much. I don’t know what it would be like with women. Elmer belongs to a family that walks roughshod over people when they feel like it. But I don’t think he would lay for your man and bushwhack him.”
“I tell you simply what I believe,” she said gravely. “I don’t know. There is no proof. I wouldn’t breathe this to any one. I only say it to you because I’m asking you to work for me. I don’t know that I would even tell you, if you didn’t look so much like Doc that you could easily be taken for him. If you ride for me, you may fall heir to whatever bad blood did exist between him and Elmer Duffy. If Doc hadn’t made an issue of me with this man he would still be alive. I don’t want to be a bone of contention. I won’t be. I like men well enough until they get too friendly. If a man works for me, he’s working for me, and that’s all there is to it. So now you know all about it. And I do need a rider to take Doc’s place.”
“It was very inconsiderate of him to get himself killed off when you needed him.” Rock couldn’t forbear the ironic note. “Riders can’t always be picked up in this country just when you want ’em.”
“You’re brutal.” Nona drew herself up, and her eyes filled. “I liked Doc. He was nice. He was loyal. It made me sick to see him die like that. It made me feel guilty, because I was partly the cause. But I can’t help it that I’m a woman. Can’t you understand? I’m not a callous beast.”
And Rock knew she was not. He knew he had hurt her with that thrust.
“Well, I’ll guarantee not to afflict you with my admiration if I feel any,” he smiled. “And it’s a cowpuncher’s nature to be loyal to the people he works for. If I ever lock horns with Elmer Duffy, it won’t be for the reason you say your man, Doc, did. No. And I like the looks of this country. I’d sort of like to linger on this range for a while. So there doesn’t seem to be any reason why I shouldn’t work for you.”
“All right,” she answered composedly. “If you’ll bunch those horses that are in the pasture, I’ll show you what ones to saddle. I want you to go down the river with me after I’ve milked this other cow.”
While Rock gathered a few horses out of the pasture, he saw a rider cross the flat. The milch cows were in a small corral. Rock bunched the horses in a larger one and walked through the stable to where Nona finished her dairymaid’s task. From the door he saw that the man was Elmer Duffy. Rock’s mind worked fast. He was bound to encounter Duffy some time, and it might as well be now. Duffy’s business was with Nona Parke, not with him. But Rock cared nothing for that. He remembered that he had killed this man’s brother. He was going to live for a time in Duffy’s immediate neighborhood. If Duffy had taken Mark’s death to heart and brooded over it, Rock wanted to know and be ready for what might follow.
But he was hardly prepared for what did happen. He walked straight toward Duffy. The man’s back was toward him. He was talking to Nona. She was just rising from her stool. Duffy was in no way excited. His tone was the habitual slow drawl of the native Texan.
Then Rock spoke.
“Hello, Duffy,” said he.
Duffy wheeled. His arms hung by his sides. There wasn’t the faintest twitch of the fingers hanging a little below his gun belt, nor any quick lighting of his slaty eyes, nor the frowning recognition Rock half expected. True, recognition impended in the man’s attitude. And he was wary—wary without being hostile.
“Hellow, Doc,” he answered evenly.
“Doc!” A ripple of sardonic amusement stirred in Rock. Duffy thought he faced Nona Parke’s dead rider. Rock stood perfectly still for a second or two. The man’s eyes never left his.
“You didn’t expect to see me, did you?” Rock asked.
Surely his voice would establish his identity. Duffy had been in daily contact with Rock Holloway for two months on trail and had known him casually the season earlier. But he didn’t know him now. His words proved that.
“Why, I reckoned I might,” he answered, “seein’ I rode in here. You didn’t expect me to take what you said serious, did you?”
Rock had a retentive memory.
“About you keeping off this ranch?”
Duffy nodded. Rock could understand his watchfulness.
“Shucks! I’ve changed my mind about caring a whoop whether you come here, there, or the other place,” Rock said slowly, “so long as you act white. But there’s something I do want to tell you, Duffy. Up the river yesterday somebody took a pot shot at me. Nona heard it.”
He looked at her. For a second her face was a study. Would she play up to his lead? Rock didn’t know himself precisely why he did this, except that instinctively he took the opening Duffy gave him.
But her words came with sharp emphasis. Her wits were nimble.
“I heard the shot. I didn’t see who fired.”
“I don’t like to be shot at from ambush,” Rock said pointedly.
“You say I’d do that? Did do that?”
A rising inflection put an edge in Duffy’s tone. The tan of his long, homely face went a brick red.
“I didn’t say so. I said I don’t like to be shot at from ambush.”
Duffy stared at him for a second or two.
“Lissen, Doc Martin.” His tone was flat—squeezed dry of all feeling. “You don’t like me. You’ve been kinda high-handed with me more’n once. I don’t suffer with admiration for you, myself. But I’ll tell you this: if I want you, I’ll take you with an even break. I’m no bushwhacker. If somebody shot at you, an’ you think it was me, you got another think comin’. When I shoot at you, I’ll be lookin’ you in the eye.”
“I’m inclined to take your word for that, Duffy,” Rock said coolly. “If you say you didn’t, we’ll let it go at that.”
“The way you’ve acted with me the last few months,” said Duffy, growing querulous, “I’d as soon shoot it out with you as not. I’m tellin’ you straight, Martin, but it’s up to you to make the break. I don’t hunt trouble.”
“Nor do I,” Rock assured him truthfully.
“You musta changed your ways mighty sudden, then,” Duffy retorted.
Rock grinned amiably.
“I have,” said he. “I’ve sort of convinced myself I’ve been barking up the wrong tree, Elmer. I aim to change my ways. Don’t know whether for better or worse. But if you don’t go gunnin’ for me, I certainly don’t hanker to pick a fuss with you.”
Duffy eyed him doubtfully. He turned to the girl.
“Do you reckon he means what he says?”
“He always does, so far as I know,” she told him shortly.
“Well, we might as well let it go at that,” Duffy finally said. “Sounds reasonable.”
“All right. Let her go as she lays.” Rock closed the conversation abruptly by turning on his heel. He walked back through the stable, into the larger corral, where he perched himself on the top rail. He looked down on the sleek backs of Nona Parke’s saddle stock, but his mind was wholly on the amazing fact that he had practically committed himself to a dead man’s identity.
He watched Duffy walk up to the house with Nona, carrying the two pails of milk, saw him stand at the door and talk for a minute. Then he came back, swung into his saddle, and rode around the stable end. Rock tightened up a little. The girl had been a restraining influence. Now, perhaps Duffy would have more to say or do. Long ago Rock had privately estimated Elmer Duffy as the most dangerous of the Duffy quartet, chiefly because he was tenacious of an idea or a grievance and inclined to be moody. But he only looked up at Rock and said:
“You kinda got me goin’. Martin. You’ve changed your tune a heap. You recollect what you told me last time we talked?”
Rock nodded, with only a hazy idea of what he was supposed to have said.
“Let’s get down to cases,” Duffy persisted. “Do I understand that you’ve changed your idea that you got a license to close-herd this girl of Parke’s, any time another man acts like he wanted to speak to her?”
Rock sifted tobacco into a paper.
“I don’t know as I like your way of putting it,” he said, with a pretense at being sullen. “But she’s convinced me she aims to be a free agent. It’s nothing to me who she talks to, from now on. I don’t claim no special privileges no more. She’s made it clear that she’s able to look out for herself, as far as men are concerned.”
Duffy ironed out the smile that started to overspread his face.
“It don’t look to me,” he said thoughtfully, “like any man’s got the inside track with that girl. She sure don’t favor nobody that I know of. So you were just naturally buildin’ up trouble for yourself, takin’ the stand you did.”
“I guess so,” Rock admitted indifferently. “Anyway, I got something else besides her on my mind, now. I’d sure like to find out who tried to pot me yesterday, Duffy. I’d make him hard to catch.”
“Don’t know as I blame you,” Duffy remarked. “But don’t you never think it was me, Doc. I’ve done told you where I stand. So long.”
Yes, Duffy had made it clear enough where he stood. Still, somebody had shot Doc Martin. Rock was still pondering on that problem when Nona came back from the house. She had changed into a pair of overalls and leather chaps. She wore a beautifully made pair of tan riding boots. She looked like a slim, capable boy, with her dark hair tucked out of sight under a felt hat.
“What on earth did you do that for?” she demanded irritably.
“Do what for?” Rock affected ignorance.
“Let him think you were Doc Martin?”
“Well, he was so darned sure of it, for one thing,” Rock answered thoughtfully. “It struck me as a good chance to feel around and find out if he did take that crack at Doc. I don’t believe he did. Also, I think I’ve convinced him that I’m going—as Doc Martin—to mind my own business so far as you’re concerned.”
“I noticed how you managed to create that impression,” Nona admitted. “You were very—very——”
“Adroit,” Rock suggested dryly.
“That’s the word.” She smiled.
“You certainly have——”
“I meant to be,” Rock interrupted, frowning. “I value my scalp, and I never like to scrap over nothing.”
He looked intently at her.
“See here: If people around here persist in taking me for Doc Martin, why not let it go at that?” he suggested.
“Why do you want to pass for him?” she demanded. “Are you on the dodge for something?”
Rock shook his head. He didn’t want to explain to her the possibility of Elmer Duffy starting a blood feud with him over Mark’s death. He had disarmed Duffy, he thought, in his rôle of Doc Martin, no longer jealously hostile toward any ambitious male who came wooing Nona Parke. And Rock was quite willing to chance some unknown enemy of the dead rider. Pity and wonder had stirred in his breast when he looked at his double stretched on the bed, and when he helped to bury him. He had a sense of outrage in a man being murdered from ambush. He was puzzled about that shooting—curious about the how and why.
“No,” he said. “I have told you my name, and where I came from. I have nothing to hide. Just the same, I have a notion to play Doc Martin for a while. I might find out who killed him. Duffy didn’t.”
“Perhaps not. I’d hate to believe it. And, still, I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. If Elmer Duffy didn’t shoot Doc, I can’t imagine who would. Doc never quarreled with any one else around here that I know about, and I think that I would know if he had.”
“Sometimes,” Rock said, and he was thinking of himself when he spoke, “things that are a long way behind a man crop up. Queer things happen in the cow country. Well, what about it? Do you want to keep it dark about Doc being shot and let me play his hand for a while? Or shall I announce myself to Elmer Duffy and everybody else who takes me for Doc Martin?”
“Suit yourself,” she said. “You will be taking your own chances.”
“On what?”
“On whatever happens.”
“Oh, well, I don’t mind taking a sporting chance now and then.” Rock swung lightly off the fence. “What’s the program now, Miss Parke?”
“Rope that sorrel for me and that chunky bay for yourself,” she said crisply. “And catch me that black pony.”
Nona saddled her horse as soon as Rock, and she had him saddle the small black horse with an extra rig in the stable. They rode to the house. The girl swung down, darted in, and came out with a cushion, which she fastened across the fork of her saddle. Then she called Betty, and that chubby person toddled forth.
Nona put her on the cushion and swung up to her seat. The child, all smiles for Rock, rode easily within the protection of her sister’s arm. The extra horse trotted at the end of Rock’s lead rope, as they set off down the valley.
“Didn’t she see him?” Rock muttered. “How come she takes me for him?”
Nona shook her head. “I left her shut in the house when we made that ride yesterday. You can see she takes you for granted.”
Betty undoubtedly did. She prattled away, calling him “Doc.”
“I don’t like to leave her alone much,” Nona explained. “That’s why we’ve got this extra cayuse. There’s a half-breed family lives down river a few miles. One of the girls has been nurse for Betty most all the last year. She’s been away for a while, and I’ve got to get her back. I’ve carried this child hundreds of miles like this, but it’s too hard on her and on me. I’ve got to be free to ride when I need to.”
Rock nodded comprehension. He had been wondering how she managed with the baby.
They traversed long river flats, gray with sage, heavily grassed here and there, spotted with natural meadows of blue-joint hay. Meadow larks caroled. In the still pools, where foaming riffles ended, wild ducks mothered flapping broods. Gray and brown buffalo birds haunted the berry thickets and fluttered out at their approach. Except for this wild life, the bottoms were deserted. Few cattle grazed in those valleys, so hotly scrutinized by a brassy sun. They kept to high ground and cooler airs. And, just as Rock was beginning to wonder if his day’s ride should consist of acting solely as Nona’s escort, she pulled up and pointed to a wide-mouthed draw, opening into the Marias from the north.
“Ride up that about six or eight miles, then swing west, and circle back to the ranch,” she said. “My brand is a TL, same as on your horse. Left rib on cattle. Make a sort of rough estimate of how many you see. You ought to get in about two or three o’clock. I’ll have some dinner cooked.”