He didn’t waste any time askin’ me not to talk about what was other folks’ affairs; he just went to the door, grabbed the jag of rock, swung around to the ledge, and I follered after.
We saddled up, rode down a windin’ path ’at I’d never heard of before, and then rode up again until we came to a little clump o’ swamp shrubbery, backed up again’ the north face o’ Mount Mizner. We follered a twisty path through this and finally came out on an open space in which stood a fair-sized cabin. He whistled a five-note call, and the door was opened by an old woman who was a stranger to me. “Mother Shipley, this is Happy Hawkins,” sez he. “How’s Kit?”
The old woman gave me a gimlet look, and then her sharp features expanded to a smile, and she bobbed her head. “Kit’s gettin’ hard to manage,” sez she.
We went into the cabin, and found Kit with a bandage around her ankle, sittin’ in a rockin’ chair, and lookin’ patiently disgusted. She was a fine-lookin’ girl, with a fair streak of boy in her, and she had never had enough practice at bein’ an invalid to shine at it. Her face lit up at the Friar; but her gaze was mighty inquirin’ when she turned it at me.
“You know Happy Hawkins, don’t ya?” sez the Friar. She nodded her head, and he went on. “Well, he’s one o’ the fellers you can trust, if you trust him entire; but he’s got such a bump of curiosity that if you don’t tell it all to him in the first place, he can’t do no other work until he finds it out on his own hook. He’s my friend, and he’ll be your friend; so I want you to tell him just how things are, and then he’ll be under obligations to do whatever we want him to.”
So Kit cut loose and told me her story. Her father, ol’ Jim Murray, had got crippled up about ten years before, and since then had become a professional homesteader, nosin’ out good places, an’ then sellin’ out to the big cattle outfits. He also made it his business to find ways to drive off genuwine homesteaders; and in addition to this he was a home tyrant and hard to live with. He allus had plenty o’ money, but was generally dead broke when it came to pleasant words an’ smiles—which was why Kit had gone off with the show.
While she was away, she had married a low-grade cuss, who had misused her beyond endurance; so when he had skipped with another woman, she had come back to the old man. She didn’t want folks ’at knew her to find out how bad hit she’d been; so she had tried to bluff it out; but the young fellers kept fallin’ in love with her and wantin’ to marry her. She hadn’t meant no harm; but she had played one again’ the other, hopin’ they’d soon have their feelin’s hurt and let her alone. This was a fool notion, but she had been honest in it.
Bud Fisher, the Texas kid in the Ty Jones outfit, had got daffy about her; and then one night at a dance she had shot some smiles into the eyes of Olaf the Swede. She said he was such a glum-lookin’ cuss she had no idee he would take it serious; but he had stood lookin’ into her eyes with his queer blue ones, until she had felt sort o’ fainty; and from that on, he had declared war on all who glanced at her.
Bud Fisher thought it a fine joke for Olaf to fall in love, and he had teased him to the limit. This made a bad condition, and all through the spring round-up, each had done as much dirt as possible to the other; but Ty was mighty strict about his men fightin’ each other; so they hadn’t come to a clash.
Finally the kid brags that he is goin’ to elope with Kit; and then Olaf kicks off his hobbles an’ starts to stampede. The kid was wise enough to vamoose; so Olaf rides down to ol’ man Murray’s, and reads the riot act to him. Kit was hidin’ in the back room and heard it all. He told the old man that he would slaughter any one who eloped with Kit or who had a hand in it; and then he had gone back to hunt the kid again.