HUGH EXPLAINS
Back of Piodie, on the other side of a high ridge, is a deep valley hemmed in by rock-rimmed walls. Its area is about ten or fifteen acres.
The McClintocks climbed the ridge and looked down into the park. It was filled with dead and down piñon. Two years before a fire had started there, had raged furiously for a day, and had died down before the persistent attack of a heavy snowstorm. Since that time a new growth of underbrush had come up.
Scot and Hugh circled the rim, studying carefully the contour of the slopes. The upper half of these were rock-ribbed. The timber had climbed up to these boulder outcroppings and had there given up the fight to reach the summit, driven back by the lack of soil in which to root. Down in the basin the dead trees had crashed and lay across each other in confusion.
“The fire never could have got out of the valley even if the snow hadn’t stopped it,” Scot said.
“That’s how it looks to me,” Hugh agreed. “The only thing that could make it dangerous would be a high wind.”
“It would have to be a gale to spread the fire outside. The rocks made a break as safe as a fireplace.”
They covered every inch of the rim to make sure of this. They did not want to take any chance of setting fire to the town. Before they left the valley they were satisfied that a fire inside it could not do any damage.
Budd and Byers, who knew the people of the town better than the McClintocks did, set about gathering allies for the night campaign. Piodie was full of lawless adventurers ready to take a hand in any enterprise directed against the Dodsons. The difficulty was not to get enough of them, but to select the ones with cool heads not likely to be carried away by excitement.
As Vicky was walking home from school she met Hugh.
“Tell me everything. What have you done? Did he let you see the contract? Have you plans made yet?” In her eagerness the words of her questions tumbled over each other.
Hugh told her all he thought it was good for her to know. He trusted implicitly her discretion, but it was possible there might be blood shed in the attempt to win back the claims, and he did not want to make her a party to it.
“I wish I could help,” she sighed. “It’s horrid sometimes to be a girl. If it wasn’t for my school I could go to Austin, though, and look up the contract.”
“Yes, you could do that fine. But the fact is I want to get Scot away from here. Robert Dodson hates him. I don’t think he’s safe on the streets. You know how it is with gunmen. Their trigger fingers itch to kill men with reputations for gameness. Ever since that affair at the Ormsby House, Scot has been a shining mark. If Dodson should egg them on——”
The girl looked at him with an odd smile. “I suppose you’re safe enough here.”
“Oh, yes. They won’t bother me.”
“No, I suppose not,” she answered with a touch of sarcasm. “You’re only the man that killed Sam Dutch, the one that dragged him away from his friends to jail. Nobody would want to interfere with anybody as inoffensive as you.”
“I didn’t drag him away, Vicky. You did that when you stopped the rescue at the mine and planned a way to get him out of town.”
“Both you and Scot are too foolhardy,” she scolded. “You go along with your heads up and a scornful ‘Well-here-I-am, shoot-me-down-from-behind-if-you-want-to’ air that there’s no sense in. A man owes something to his friends and his relatives, doesn’t he? No need of always wearing a chip on your shoulder, is there?”
“Does Scot carry a chip on his shoulder?” Hugh asked, smiling.
“Oh, well, you know what I mean. He could try to dodge trouble a little—and so could you. But you’re both so stiff-necked.”
“I reckon Scot figures that the safest way to duck danger is to walk right through it,” he said gently. “There are times when you can’t run away from it. I always run when I can. Different with Scot. You blow him up good. He needs to take better care of himself, what with Mollie an’ the baby dependent on him.”
“Yes, you run,” she scoffed. “Were you running from it when you plastered this town with handbills about Sam Dutch’s knife? I’ve heard all about it.”
“A man’s got to throw a bluff sometimes, or get off the earth and eat dirt.”
“And the time you ran him out of Aurora.”
“Hmp! If I’d weakened then he’d ’a’ followed me an’ made me Number Twelve or Thirteen in his private graveyard.”
“You make excuses, but there’s something in what Ralph Dodson says—that you act as though you had some kind of partnership with Providence that protected you.”
“If you can point out a single time when either Scot or I went out lookin’ for trouble, Vicky, I’ll plead guilty to being too high-heeled. All we ask is to be let alone. When it’s put up to him and forced on him, a man can’t crawl out of danger. He’s got to go through.”
She smiled. “You put me in the wrong, of course. I know you don’t either of you want trouble. You’ve used the right word yourself. You McClintocks are high-heeled. You walk as though you were king of Prussia.”
“I’ve got him backed off the map. I’m an American citizen,” he answered, meeting her smile.
But though Vicky scolded him, she knew that she would not want Hugh to carry himself a whit less debonairly. Her spirit went out in kinship to meet his courage. She gloried in it that he would not let himself be daunted by the enmity of men less scrupulous and clean of action, that he went to meet unsmilingly whatever fate might have in store for him. Surely it was only in her beloved West that men like the McClintocks were bred.