Dicksie gave slight heed to matters as weighty as these. She spent much of her time on horseback, with Jim under the saddle; and in Medicine 132 Bend, where she rode with frequency, Marion’s shop became her favorite abiding-place. Dicksie ordered hats until Marion’s conscience rose and she practically refused to supply any more. But the spirited controversy on this point, as on many others––Dicksie’s haughtiness and Marion’s restraint, quite unmoved by any show of displeasure––ended always in drawing the two closer to each other.
At home Dicksie’s fancies at that time ran to chickens, and crate after crate of thoroughbreds and clutch after clutch of eggs were brought over the pass from far-away countries. But the coyotes stole the chickens and kept the hens in such a state of excitement that they could not be got to sit effectively. Nest after nest Dicksie had the mortification of seeing deserted at critical moments and left to furred prowlers of the foothills and canyons. Once she had managed to shoot a particularly bold coyote, only to be overcome with remorse at seeing its death-struggle. She gained reputation with her cousin and the men, but was ever afterward assailed with the reflection that the poor fellow might have been providing for a hungry family. Housekeeping cares rested lightly on Dicksie. Puss had charge of the house, and her mistress concerned herself more with the setting of Jim’s shoes than with the dust on the elk heads 133 over the fireplace in the dining-room. Her Medicine Bend horseshoer stood in much greater awe of her than Puss did, because if he ever left a mistake on Jim’s heels Dicksie could, and would, point it coldly out.
One March afternoon, coming home from Medicine Bend, she saw at some distance before her a party of men on horseback. She was riding a trail leading from the pass road that followed the hills, and the party was coming up the bridge road from the lower ranch. Dicksie had good eyes, and something unusual in the riding of the men was soon apparent to her. Losing and regaining sight of them at different turns in the trail, she made out, as she rode among the trees, that they were cowboys of her own ranch, and riding, under evident excitement, about a strange horseman. She recognized in the escort Stormy Gorman, the ferocious foreman of the ranch, and Denison and Jim Baugh, two of the most reckless of the men. These three carried rifles slung across their pommels, and in front of them rode the stranger.
Fragments of the breakfast-table talk of the morning came back to Dicksie’s mind. The railroad graders were in the valley below the ranch, and she had heard her cousin say a good deal on a point she cared little about, as to where the railroad 134 should cross the Stone Ranch. Approaching the fork of the two roads toward which she and the cowboys were riding, she checked her horse in the shade of a cottonwood tree, and as the party rode up the draw she saw the horseman under surveillance. It was George McCloud.
Unluckily, as she caught a glimpse of him she was conscious that he was looking at her. She bent forward to hide a momentary confusion, spoke briskly to her horse, and rode out of sight. At Marion’s she had carefully avoided him. Her precipitancy at their last meeting had seemed, on reflection, unfortunate. She felt that she must have appeared to him shockingly rude, and there was in her recalling of the scene an unconfessed impression that she had been to blame. Often when Marion spoke of him, which she did without the slightest reserve and with no reference as to whether Dicksie liked it or not, it had been in Dicksie’s mind to bring up the subject of the disagreeable scene, hoping that Marion would suggest a way for making some kind of unembarrassing amends. But such opportunities had slipped away unimproved, and here was the new railroad superintendent, whom their bluff neighbor Sinclair never referred to other than as the college guy, being brought apparently as a prisoner to the Stone Ranch.
Busied with her thoughts, Dicksie rode slowly along the upper trails until a long détour brought her around the corrals and in at the back of the house. Throwing her lines to the ground, she alighted and through the back porch door made her way unobserved to her room. From the office across the big hall she heard men’s voices in dispute, and she slipped into the dining-room, where she could hear and might see without being seen. The office was filled with cowboys. Lance Dunning, standing with a cigar in his hand and one leg thrown over a corner of the table, was facing McCloud, who stood before him with his hand on a chair. Lance was speaking as Dicksie looked into the room, and in curt tones: “My men were acting under my orders.”
“You have no right to give such orders,” McCloud said distinctly, “nor to detain me, nor to obstruct our free passage along the right of way you have agreed to convey to us under our survey.”
“Damn your survey! I never had a plat of any such survey. I don’t recognize any such survey. And if your right-of-way men had ever said a word about crossing the creek above the flume I never would have given you a right of way at all.”
“There were never but two lines run below the creek; after you raised objection I ran them both, and both were above the flume.”