She started up, pointing at a horseman who was spurring furiously along the side of the cañon after a runaway steer.
“Oh, look!” she cried again, as Hardy surveyed him indifferently. “He is whirling his lasso. Oh! He has thrown it over that big cow’s horns! Goodness me, where is my horse? No, I am going on foot, then! Oh, Lucy––Lucy dear,” she screamed, waving her hand wildly, “do let me have Pinto, just for a moment! All right––and Lucy––wasn’t that Mr. Creede?” She lingered on the ground long enough to give her an ecstatic kiss and then swung up into the saddle. “Yes, I knew it––and isn’t he just perfectly grand on that big horse? Oh, I’ve been wanting to see this all my life––and I owe it all to you!”
With a smile and a gay salutation, she leaned forward and galloped out into the riot and confusion of the rodéo, skirting the edge of the bellowing herd until she disappeared in the dust. And somehow, even by the childlike obliviousness with which she 270 scampered away, she managed to convey a pang to her errant lover which clutched at his heart for days.
And what days those were for Jefferson Creede! Deep and devious as was his knowledge of men in the rough, the ways of a woman in love were as cryptic to him as the poems of Browning. The first day that Miss Kitty rode forth to be a cowboy it was the rodéo boss, indulgent, but aware of the tenderfoot’s ability to make trouble, who soberly assigned his fair disciple to guard a pass over which no cow could possibly come. And Kitty, sensing the deceit, had as soberly amused herself by gathering flowers among the rocks. But the next day, having learned her first lesson, she struck for a job to ride, and it was the giddy-headed lover who permitted her to accompany him––although not from any obvious or selfish motives.
Miss Bonnair was the guest of the ranch, her life and welfare being placed for the time in the keeping of the boss. What kind of a foreman would it be who would turn her over to a hireling or intrust her innocent mind to a depraved individual like Bill Lightfoot? And all the decent cowmen were scared of her, so who was naturally indicated and elected but Jefferson D. Creede?
There wasn’t any branding at the round corral that night. The gather was a fizzle, for some reason, 271 though Miss Kitty rode Pinto to a finish and killed a rattlesnake with Creede’s own gun. Well, they never did catch many cattle the first few days,––after they had picked up the tame bunch that hung around the water,––and the dry weather seemed to have driven the cows in from The Rolls. But when they came in the second afternoon, with only a half of their gather, Creede rode out from the hold-up herd to meet them, looking pretty black.
It is the duty of a rodéo boss to know what is going on, if he has to ride a horse to death to find out; and the next day, after sending every man down his ridge, Jeff left Kitty Bonnair talking lion hunt with old Bill Johnson who had ridden clear over from Hell’s Hip Pocket to gaze upon this horse-riding Diana, and disappeared. As a result, Bat Wings was lathered to a fine dirt-color and there was one man in particular that the boss wanted to see.
“Jim,” he said, riding up to where one of the Clark boys was sullenly lashing the drag with his reata, “what in the hell do you mean by lettin’ all them cattle get away? Yes, you did too. I saw you tryin’ to turn ’em back, so don’t try to hand me anything like that. I used to think you was a good puncher, Jim, but a man that can’t keep a herd of cows from goin’ through a box pass ought to be smokin’ cigarettes 272 on the day herd. You bet ye! All you had to do was be there––and that’s jest exactly where you wasn’t! I was up on top of that rocky butte, and I know. You was half a mile up the cañon mousin’ around in them cliffs, that’s where you was, and the only question I want to ask is, Did you find the Lost Dutchman? No? Then what in hell was you doin’?”
The rodéo boss crowded his horse in close and thrust his face forward until he could look him squarely in the eye, and Clark jerked back his head resentfully.
“What is it to you?” he demanded belligerently.