“I Take it I am the One Wanted,” Said Williston.

LANGFORD OF THE THREE BARS

By KATE AND VIRGIL D. BOYLES

With Frontispiece in Color
By N. C. WYETH

A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS—NEW YORK

Copyright
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1907

Published April 15, 1907

Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London, England
All rights reserved
Including dramatic rights

TO OUR MOTHER
MRS. MARTHA DILLIN BOYLES

CONTENTS

LANGFORD OF THE THREE BARS

[CHAPTER I—THE ISLAND WITH A MYSTERY]

He said positively to Battle Ax, his scraggy buckskin cow pony, that they would ride to the summit of this one bluff, and that it should be the last. But he had said the same thing many times since striking the barren hill region flanking both sides of the river. Hump after hump had been surmounted since the sound of the first promise had tickled the ears of the tired bronco, humps as alike as the two humps of a Bactrian camel, the monotonous continuity of which might very well have confused the mind of one less at home on these ranges than George Williston. Even he, riding a blind trail since sun-up, sitting his saddle with a heavy indifference born of heat and fatigue, began to think it might be that they were describing a circle and the sun was playing them strange tricks. Still, he urged his pony to one more effort; just so much farther and they would retrace their steps, giving up for this day at least the locating of a small bunch of cattle, branded a lazy S, missing these three days.

Had not untoward circumstances intervened, he might still have gone blindly on; for, laying aside the gambling fever that was on him, he could ill afford to lose the ten or twelve steers somewhere wandering the wide range or huddled into some safe place, there to abide the time when a daring rustler might conveniently play at witchcraft with the brand or otherwise dispose of them with profit to himself and with credit to his craft. Moreover, what might possibly never have been missed from the vast herds of Langford, his neighbor of the plains country, was of most serious import to Williston for an even weightier reason than the actual present loss.

The existence of the small and independent ranchman was becoming precarious. He was being hounded by two prolific sources of trouble, these sources having a power and insolent strength contemptuously indifferent to any claim set up in their paths by one weaker than themselves. On the one hand was the wealthy cattle owner, whose ever-increasing wealth and consequent power was a growing menace to the interests of the small owner whose very bread and butter depended upon his ability to buy and sell to advantage. But with bigger interests slowly but surely gaining control of the markets, who might foretell the future? None beheld the ominous signs more apprehensively than did Williston, who for more than two years, striving desperately to make good mistakes and misfortunes made back in Iowa, had felt the pinching grow more and more acute. On the other hand was the vicious combination of the boldness, cunning, and greed of the cattle rustlers who harassed all the range country of the Dakotas and Nebraska. Annihilation was the sword of Damocles held over the head of the small ranchman. A hand lifted to avert impending doom would have set the air in vibration and the sword would have fallen. Nemesis was as sure to follow at the hands of the fellowship of rustlers as ever it was at the hands of the Secret Tribunal of old.

Williston was chafing under his helplessness as the jaded pony climbed doggedly this last bluff. To the right of his path a hawk was fluttering frantically just above the reach of a basilisk-eyed rattlesnake, whose baneful charm the ill-advised bird was not able to resist.

“Devil take you, Battle Ax, but you’re slow,” muttered Williston, utterly indifferent to the outcome of this battle royal. “I’d give a good deal to sit down this minute to some of my little girl’s flapjacks and coffee. But nothing for us, lazy-bones, till midnight—or morning, more likely. Do walk up as if you had some little standing in the world of cow ponies. You haven’t, of a surety, but you might make an effort. All things are possible to him who tries, you know, which is a tremendous lie, of course. But perhaps it doesn’t apply to poor devils like us who are ‘has beens.’ Here we are. Ah!”

There were no more hills. Almost directly at his feet was one of those precipitous cut-aways that characterize the border bluffs of the Missouri River. A few more steps, in the dark, and horse and rider would have plunged over a sheer wall of nearly two hundred feet. As it was, Williston gave a gasp of involuntary horror which almost simultaneously gave place to one of wonder and astonishment. He had struck the river at a point absolutely new to him. It was the time of low water, and the river, in most of its phases muddy and sullen-looking, gleamed silver and gold with the glitter of the setting sun, making a royal highway to the dwelling-place of Phœbus. A little to the north of this sparkling highroad lay what would have been an island in high water, thickly wooded with willows and cottonwoods. Now a long stretch of sand reached between bluff and island.

Dismounting, with the quick thought that yonder island might hold the secret of his lost cattle, he crept as close to the edge as he dared. The cut was sheer and tawny, entirely devoid of shrubbery by means of which one might hazard a descent. The sand bed began immediately at the foot of the yellow wall. Even though one managed to gain the bottom, one would hardly dare risk the deceitful sands, ever shifting, fair and treacherous. Baffled, he was on the point of remounting to retrace his steps when he dropped his foot from the stirrup amazed. Was the day of miracles not yet passed?

It was the sun, of course. Twelve hours of sun in the eyes could play strange tricks and might even cause a dancing black speck to assume the semblance of a man on horseback, picking his way easily, though mayhap a bit warily, across the waste of sand. He seemed to have sprung from the very bowels of the bluff. Whence else? Many a rod beyond and above the ghostly figure frowned the tawny, wicked cut-away. Path for neither horse nor man appeared so far as eye could reach. It must be the sun. But it was not the sun.

Motionless, intent, a figure cast in bronze as the sun went down, the lean ranchman gazed steadfastly down upon the miniature man and horse creeping along so far below. Not until the object of his fixed gaze had been swallowed by the trees and underbrush did his muscles relax. This man had ridden as if unafraid.

“What man has done, man can do,” ran swiftly through Williston’s brain, and with no idea of abandoning his search until he had probed the mystery, he mounted and rode northward, closely examining the edge of the precipice as he went along for any evidence of a possible descent. Presently he came upon a cross ravine, devoid of shrubbery, too steep for a horse, but presenting possibilities for a man. With unerring instinct he followed the cross-cut westward. Soon a scattering of scrub oaks began to appear, and sumach already streaked with crimson. A little farther and the trees began to show spiral wreaths of woodbine and wild grape. Yet a little farther, and doubtless there would be outlet for horse as well as man.

But Williston was growing impatient. Besides, the thought came to him that he had best not risk his buckskin to the unknown dangers of an untried trail. What if he should go lame? Accordingly he was left behind in a slight depression where he would be pretty well hidden, and Williston scrambled down the steep incline alone. When foothold or handhold was lacking, he simply let himself go and slid, grasping the first root or branch that presented itself in his dare-devil course.

Arrived at the bottom, he found his clothes torn and his hands bleeding; but that was nothing. With grim determination he made his way through the ravine and struck across the sand trail with a sure realization of his danger, but without the least abatement of his resolution. The sand was firm under his feet. The water had receded a sufficient length of time before to make the thought of quicksands an idle fear. No puff of cloudy smoke leaped from a rifle barrel. If, as he more than half suspected, the island was a rendezvous for cattle thieves, a place surely admirably fitted by nature for such unlawful operations, the rustlers were either overconfident of the inaccessibility of their retreat and kept no lookout, or they were insolently indifferent to exposure. The former premise was the more likely. A light breeze, born of the afterglow, came scurrying down the river bed. Here and there, where the sand was finest and driest, it rose in little whirlwinds. No sound broke the stillness of the summer evening.

What was that? Coyotes barking over yonder across the river? That alien sound! A man’s laugh, a curse, a heart-breaking bellow of pain. Williston parted ever so slightly the thick foliage of underbrush that separated him from the all too familiar sounds and peered within.

In the midst of a small clearing,—man-made, for several stumps were scattered here and there,—two men were engaged in unroping and releasing a red steer, similar in all essential respects to a bunch of three or four huddled together a little to one side. They were all choice, well-fed animals, but there were thousands of just such beasts herding on the free ranges. He owned red steers like those, but was there a man in the cattle country who did not? They were impossible of identification without the aid of their brand, and it happened that they were so bunched as to completely baffle Williston in his eager efforts to decipher the stamp that would disclose their ownership. That they were the illegitimate prey of cattle rustlers, he never for one moment doubted. The situation was conclusive. A bed of glowing embers constantly replenished and kept at white heat served to lighten up the weird scene growing dusky under the surrounding cottonwoods.

Williston thought he recognized in one of the men—the one who seemed to be directing the procedure of this little affair, whose wide and dirty hat-rim was so tantalizingly drawn over his eyes—the solitary rider whose unexpected appearance had so startled him a short time before. Both he and his companion were dressed after the rough, nondescript manner of cattle men, both were gay, laughing and talkative, and seemingly as oblivious to possible danger as if engaged in the most innocent and legitimate business.

A little to the left and standing alone was an odd creature of most striking appearance—a large, spotted steer with long, peculiar-looking horns. It were quite impossible to mistake such a possession if it had once been yours. Its right side was turned full toward Williston and in the centre of the hip stood out distinctly the cleanly cauterized three perpendicular lines that were the identifying mark of the Three Bars ranch, one of those same big, opulent, self-centred outfits whose astonishingly multiplying sign was becoming such a veritable and prophetic writing on the wall for Williston and his kind.

Who then had dared to drive before him an animal so branded? The boldness of the transgression and the insolent indifference to the enormity of attendant consequences held him for the moment breathless. His attention was once more called to the movements of the men. The steer with which they had been working was led away still moaning with surprise and pain, and another brought forward from the reserve bunch. The branded hip, if there was a brand, was turned away from Williston. The bewildered animal was cleverly roped and thrown to the ground. The man who was plainly directing the affair, he of the drooping hat and lazy shoulders, stepped to the fire. Williston held his breath with the intensity of his interest. The man stooped and took an iron from the fire. It was the end-gate rod of a wagon and it was red-hot. In the act of straightening himself from his stooping position, the glowing iron stick in his right hand, he flung from his head with an easy swing the flopping hat that interfered with the nicety of sight requisite in the work he was about to do, and faced squarely that quiet, innocent-looking spot which held the watching man in its brush; and in the moment in which Williston drew hastily back, the fear of discovery beating a tattoo of cold chills down his spine, recognition of the man came to him in a clarifying burst of comprehension.

But the man evidently saw nothing and suspected nothing. His casual glance was probably only a manifestation of his habitual attitude of being never off his guard. He approached the prostrate steer with indifference to any meaning that might be attached to the soft snapping of twigs caused by Williston’s involuntary drawing back into the denser shadows.

“Y’ don’t suppose now, do you, that any blamed, interferin’ off’cer is a-loafin’ round where he oughtn’t to be?” said the second man with a laugh.

Williston, much relieved, again peered cautiously through the brush. He was confident a brand was about to be worked over. He must see—what there was to see.

“Easy now, boss,” said the second man with an officious warning. He was a big, beefy fellow with a heavy, hardened face. Williston sounded the depths of his memory but failed to place him among his acquaintances in the cow country.

“Gamble on me,” returned the leader with ready good-nature, “I’ll make it as clean as a boiled shirt. I take it you don’t know my reputation, pard. Well, you’ll learn. You’re all right, only a trifle green, that’s all.”

With a firm, quick hand, he began running the searing iron over the right hip of the animal. When he had finished and the steer, released, staggered to its feet, Williston saw the brand clearly. It was J R. If it had been worked over another brand, it certainly was a clean job. He could see no indications of any old markings whatsoever.

“Too clean to be worked over a lazy S,” thought Williston, “but not over three bars.”

“There were six reds,” said the chief, surveying the remaining bunch with a critical eye. “One must have wandered off while I was gone. Get out there in the brush and round him up, Alec, while I tackle this long-horned gentleman.”

Williston turned noiselessly away from the scene which so suddenly threatened danger. Both men were fully armed and would brook no eavesdropping. Once more he crossed the sand in safety and found his horse where he had left him, up the ravine. He vaulted into the saddle and galloped away into the quiet night.

[CHAPTER II—“ON THE TRAIL”]

Williston himself came to the door. His thin, scholarly face looked drawn and worn in the mid-day glare. A tiredness in the eyes told graphically of a sleepless night.

“I’m glad to see you, Langford,” he said. “It was good of you to come. Leave your horse for Mary. She’ll give her water when she’s cooled off a bit.”

“You sent for me, Williston?” asked the young man, rubbing his face affectionately against the wet neck of his mare.

“I did. It was good of you to come so soon.”

“Fortunately, your messenger found me at home. As for the rest, Sade, here, hasn’t her beat in the cow country, if she is only a cow pony, eh, Sade?”

At that moment, Mary Williston came into the open doorway of the rude claim shanty set down in the very heart of the sun-seared plain which stretched away into heart-choking distances from every possible point of the compass. And sweet she was to look upon, though tanned and glowing from close association with the ardent sun and riotous wind. Her auburn hair, more reddish on the edges from sunburn, was fine and soft and there was much of it. It seemed newly brushed and suspiciously glossy. One sees far on the plains, and two years out of civilization are not enough to make a girl forget the use of a mirror, even if it be but a broken sliver, propped up on a pine-board dressing table. She looked strangely grown-up despite her short, rough skirt and badly scuffed leather riding-leggings. Langford stared at her with a startled look of mingled admiration and astonishment. She came forward and put her hand on the mare’s bridle. She was not embarrassed in the least. But color came into the stranger’s face. He swept his wide hat from his head quickly.

“No indeed, Miss Williston; I’ll water Sade myself.”

“Please let me. I’d love to.”

“She’s used to it, Langford,” said Williston in his quiet, gentlemanly voice, the well-bred cadence of which spoke of a training far removed from the harassments and harshnesses of life in this plains country. “You see, she is the only boy I have. She must of necessity be my chore boy as well as my herd boy. In her leisure moments she holds down her kitchen claim; I don’t know how she does it, but she does. You had better let her do it; she will hold it against you if you don’t.”

“But I couldn’t have a woman doing my grooming for me. Why, the very idea!”

He sprang into the saddle.

“But you waited for me to do it,” said the girl, looking up at him curiously.

“Did I? I didn’t mean to. Yes, I did, too. But I beg your pardon. You see—say, look here; are you the ‘little girl’ who left word for me this morning?”

“Yes. Why not?”

“Well, you see,” smiling, but apologetic, “one of the boys said that Williston’s little girl had ridden over and said her father wanted to see me as soon as I could come. So, you see, I thought—”

“Dad always calls me that, so most of the people around here do, too. It is very silly.”

“I don’t think so at all. I only wonder why I have not known about you before,” with a frank smile. “It must be because I’ve been away so much of the time lately. Why didn’t you wait for me?” he asked suddenly. “Ten miles is a sort of a lonesome run—for a girl.”

“I did wait a while,” said Mary, honestly, “but you didn’t seem in any hurry. I expect you didn’t care to be bored that long way with the silly chatter of a ‘little girl.’”

“Well,” said Langford, ruefully, “I’m afraid I did feel a little relieved when I found you had not waited. I never will again. I do beg your pardon,” he called, laughingly, over his shoulder as he galloped away to the spring.

When he returned there was no one to receive him but Williston. Together they entered the house. It was a small room into which Langford was ushered. It was also very plain. It was more than that, it was shabby. An easy-chair or two that had survived the wreckage of the house of Williston had been shipped to this “land of promise,” together with a few other articles such as were absolutely indispensable. The table was a big shipping box, though Langford did not notice that, for it was neatly covered with a moth-eaten, plum-colored felt cloth. A rug, crocheted out of particolored rags, a relic of Mary’s conservative and thrifty grandmother, served as a carpet for the living-room. A peep through the open door into the next and only other room disclosed glimpses of matting on the floor. There was a holy place even in this castaway house on the prairie. As the young man’s careless eyes took in this new significance, the door closed softly. The “little girl” had shut herself in.

The two men sat down at the table. It was hot. They were perspiring freely. The flies, swarming through the screenless doorway, stung disagreeably.

Laconically Williston told his story. He wasted no words in the telling. In the presence of the man whose big success made his own pitiful failures incongruous, his sensitive scholar’s nature had shut up like a clam.

Langford’s jaw was set. His young face was tense with interest. He had thrown his hat on the floor as he came in, as is the way with men who have lived much without women. He had a strong, bronzed face, with dare-devil eyes, blue they were, too, and he had a certain turn of the head, a mark of distinction which success always gives to her sons. He had big shoulders, clad in a blue flannel shirt open at the throat. In his absorption he had forgotten the “little girl” as completely as if she had, in very truth, been the ten-year-old of his imagination. How plainly he could see all the unholy situation,—the handful of desperate men perfectly protected on the little island. One man sighting from behind a cottonwood could play havoc with a whole sheriff’s posse on that open stretch of sand-bar. Nothing but a surprise—and did these insolent men fear surprise? They had laughed at the suggestion of the near presence of an officer of the law. And did they not do well to laugh? Surely it was a joke, a good one, this idea of an officer’s being where he was needed in Kemah County.

“And my brand was on that spotted steer,” he interrupted. “I know the creature—know him well. He has a mean eye. Had the gall to dispute the right of way with me once, not so long ago, either. He was in the corral at the time, but he’s been on the range all Summer. He may have the evil eye all right, but he’s mine, bad eye and all; and what is mine, I will have. And is that the only original brand you saw?”

“The only one,” quietly, “unless the J R on that red steer when he got up was an original one.”

“J R? Who could J R be?”

“I couldn’t say, but the man was—Jesse Black.”

“Jesse Black!”

The repeated words were fairly spit out.

“Jesse Black! I might have known. Who else bold enough to loot the Three Bars? But his day has come. Not a hair, nor a hide, not a hoof, not tallow enough to fry a flapjack shall be left on the Three Bars before he repents his insolence.”

“What will you do?” asked Williston.

“What will you do?” retorted Langford.

“I? What can I do?” in the vague, helpless tone of the dreamer.

“Everything—if you will,” briefly.

He snatched up his wide hat.

“Where are you going?” asked Williston, curiously.

“To see Dick Gordon before this day is an hour older. Will you come along?”

“Ye—es,” hesitatingly. “Gordon hasn’t made much success of things so far, has he?”

“Because you—and men like you—are under the thumb of men like Jesse Black,” said Langford, curtly. “Afraid to peach for fear of antagonizing the gang. Afraid to vote against the tools of the cattle thieves for fear of antagonizing the gang. Afraid to call your souls your own for fear of antagonizing the gang. Your ‘on the fence’ policy didn’t work very well this time, did it? You haven’t found your cattle, have you? The angel must have forgotten. Thought you were tainted of Egypt, eh?”

“It is easy for you to talk,” said Williston, simply. “It would be different if your bread and butter and your little girl’s as well depended on a scrawny little bunch like mine.”

“Maybe,” said Langford, shrugging his shoulders. “Doesn’t seem to have exempted you, though, does it? But Black is no respecter of persons, you know. However, the time has come for Dick Gordon to show of what stuff he is made. It was for this that I worked for his election, though I confess I little thought at the time that proofs for him would be furnished from my own herds. Present conditions humiliate me utterly. Am I a weakling that they should exist? Are we all weaklings?”

A faint, appreciative smile passed over Williston’s face. No, Langford did not look a weakling, neither had the professed humiliation lowered his proud head. Here was a man—a godlike type, with his sunny hair and his great strength. This was the man who had thrown not only the whole weight of his personal influence, which was much, but his whole-hearted and aggressive service as well, into the long and bitter campaign for county sovereignty, and had thus turned the scale in favor of the scarcely hoped-for victory over the puppet of the cattle rustlers. Williston knew his great object had been to rid the county of its brigands. True it was that this big, ruddy, self-confident ranchman was no weakling.

Langford strode to the door. Then he turned quickly.

“Look here, Williston, I shall make you angry, I suppose, but it has to go in the cattle country, and you little fellows haven’t shown up very white in these deals; you know that yourself.”

“Well?”

“Are you going to stand pat with us?”

“If you mean, am I going to tell what I know when called upon,” answered Williston, with a simple dignity that made Langford color with sudden shame, “I am. There are many of us ‘little fellows’ who would have been glad to stand up against the rustling outrage long ago had we received any backing. The moral support of men of your class has not been what you might call a sort of ‘on the spot’ support, now, has it?” relapsing into a gentle sarcasm. “At least, until you came to the front,” he qualified.

“You will not be the loser, and there’s my hand on it,” said Langford, frankly and earnestly, ignoring the latter part of the speech. “The Three Bars never forgets a friend. They may do you before we are through with them, Williston, but remember, the Three Bars never forgets.”

Braggadocio? Maybe. But there was strength back of it, there was determination back of it, and there was an abiding faith in the power of the Three Bars to make things happen, and a big wrath destined to sleep not nor slumber till some things had happened in the cattle country.

Mary Williston, from her window, as is the way with a maid, watched the two horsemen for many a mile as they galloped away. She followed them with her eyes while they slowly became faint, moving specks in the level distance and until they were altogether blotted out, and there was no sign of living thing on the plain that stretched between. But Paul Langford, as is the way with a man, forgot that he had seen a beautiful girl and had thrilled to her glance. He looked back not once as he urged his trusty little mare on to see Dick Gordon.

[CHAPTER III—LOUISE]

It was raining when she left Wind City, but the rain had soon been distanced. Perhaps the Judge was right when he said it never rained north or west of Wind City. But the Judge had not wanted her to go. Neither had the Judge’s wife.

Full twenty minutes, only day before yesterday, the Judge had delayed his day’s outing at the mill where the Jim River doubles right around on its tracks, in order to make it perfectly clear to her that it was absolutely outside of the bounds of her duty, that it was altogether an affair on the side, that she could not be expected to go, and that the prosecuting attorney up there had merely asked her out of courtesy, in deference to her position. Of course he would be glad enough to get her, but let him get some one nearer home, or do without. It wasn’t at all necessary for the court reporter to hold herself in readiness to answer the call of anything outside her prescribed circuit duties. To be sure she would earn a trifle, but it was a hard trip, a hard country, and she had much better postpone her initial journey into the unknown until the regular term of court, when he could be with her. He had then thrown his minnow seine over his shoulders, taken his minnow pail in one hand and his reel case and lunch box in the other, and walked out to the road wagon awaiting him at the gate, and so off to his frolic, leaving her to fight it out for herself.

The Judge’s wife had not been so diplomatic, not by any means. She had dwelt long and earnestly, and no doubt to a large extent truly, on the uncivilized condition of their neighbors up the line; the roughness of accommodation, the boldness and license of the cowboys, the daring and insolence of the cattle thieves, the cunning and dishonesty of the Indians, and the uncouthness and viciousness of the half-breeds. She had ended by declaring eloquently that Louise would die of lonesomeness if, by God’s good providence, she escaped a worse fate at the hands of one or all of the many evils she had enumerated. Yes, it was very evident Aunt Helen had not wanted her to go. But Aunt Helen’s real reason had been that she held it so dizzily unconventional for her niece to go out to that wild and unholy land alone. She did not actually fear for her niece’s personal safety, and Louise more than half suspected the truth.

She had heard all the arguments before. They had little or no terrors for her now. They were the arguments used by the people back in her eastern home, those dear, dear people, her people—how far away she was!—when they had schemed and plotted so pathetically to keep her with them, the second one to break away from the slow, safe, and calm traditions of her kin in the place where generation after generation of her people had lived and died, and now lay waiting the Great Judgment in the peaceful country burying-ground.

She had listened to them dutifully, half-believingly, swallowed hard and followed her uncle, her father’s youngest brother, to the “Land of the Dakotahs,” the fair land of promise, right in the face of her fears and the loneliness that loomed before her—a thing with smirks and horns and devil’s eyes that would not be suppressed, but perched itself insolently before her, a heart-choking presence, magnified by the mist in her eyes, through all the long, long journey to the west country. It had left her for a while when she had crossed the Sioux and was on Dakota soil at last. It was such a glorious land through which she was passing, the fair region of the corn-belt, and such a prosperous land, and the fields spread so broadly. It had been a sunny day with clear skies, one of those days when distances are so infinite in South Dakota, the land of widespread spaces. It was indeed a fertile valley through which she was passing. There is none better on earth.

When her train had pulled out of Yankton, she reflected with a whimsical smile that she had not yet seen an Indian. To be sure, she had not really expected to see one in feathers and war-paint, but surely an Indian of some description—did not the traditions of her youth run that Dakota was the land of Indians and blizzards? She well remembered—indeed, could she ever forget?—when, a tot of seven or eight, she had run out into the road to gaze after the carry-all that was taking her well-beloved young uncle away, away, into that dreadful land where blood ran like rivers and where people trimmed their clothes with scalps. She even remembered the feel of the warm, yellow dust up to her bare ankles and the dreadful lump that she couldn’t swallow when her uncle leaned out and waved his hat vigorously, crying out gayly:—

“Good-bye, little girl, good-bye. If they take my scalp, I’ll beg them as a special favor to send it back to you as a keepsake. Don’t forget to take good care of it. I was always rather proud of my yaller mop.”

He had said more; he had kept on calling to her till the big woods swallowed him. But she had understood nothing after that last awful charge. It had happened more than fifteen years before, but for many and many a day thereafter, sensitive mite that she had been, she would run and hide in the hay-mow whenever she saw her father or the boys coming from town with the mail. It was years before the horror of the expected packet containing the fair hair of her young uncle, dabbled with blood, fell away from her.

Gradually the awfulness of that dread expectation passed away. Now, that same dear uncle was a man of power and position in the new land that had graciously permitted him his scalp. Only last November he had been reëlected to his third term on the bench of his circuit with a big, heart-stirring majority. In the day of his prosperity he had not forgotten the little, tangle-haired girl who had cried so inconsolably when he went away, and the unaccountable horror in whose eyes he had tried to laugh away on that never-to-be-forgotten day when he had wrenched his heartstrings from their safe abiding-place and gone forth in quest of the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end—the first of many generations. Tradition knew no other since his ancestors had felled forests and built homes of hewn logs. Now he had sent for Louise. His court reporter had recently left him for other fields of labor.

There was commotion among her people on receipt of the astounding proposition. She lived over again the dark days of the first flitting. It might well be her uncle had exaggerated the dangers of life in the new land. It was great fun to shock his credulous relatives. He had surely written them some enormous tales during those fifteen years and more. He used to chuckle heartily to himself at reading some of the sympathizing replies. But these tales were held in evidence against him now that he dared to want Louise. Every letter was brought out by Louise’s dear old grandmother and read to her over again. Louise did not half believe them, but they were gospel truth to her grandmother and almost so to her father and mother as well. She remembered the old spirit of fun rampant in her favorite uncle, and while his vivid pictures took all the color from her sensitive face, deep down in her heart she recognized them for what they were worth. The letters were a strange medley of grasshoppers, blizzards, and Indians. But a ten-dollar per diem was a great temptation over a five-dollar per diem, and times were pretty hard on the old farm. More than all, the inexplicable something that had led her uncle to throw tradition to the four winds of heaven was calling her persistently and would not be denied. So she had written to him for the truth.

“My dear child,” he had answered, “I live in a little city whose civilization would make some of our good friends in the old home stare. As for grasshoppers, I believe there was some crazy talk ages ago, but in my day I do well to corner enough scrawny, scared specimens to land a fish in midsummer. Their appalling scarcity is a constant sorrow to me. Makes me plumb mad even yet to think of the hopeless hours I used to spend blistering my nose on White River, dangling for my finny favorite with dough-balls. Dough-balls—ugh! ‘Send us more grasshoppers, oh, Lord,’ is my daily prayer. As for your last question, I cannot answer it so well. Not enjoying the personal acquaintance of many Indians I cannot tell you much about them. I believe there are a few over on the Crow Creek Reservation and perhaps as many on Lower Brule. I wouldn’t be positive, but I think so. Occasionally I meet one coming from that direction. I have heard—mind, this is only hearsay—that there are a handful or so down on the Rosebud Reservation. I wouldn’t vouch for it. You can hear most anything in this day and generation. The few I have met seem mild enough. They appear to be rather afraid of me. Their chief occupations seem to be dog-eating and divorce-getting, so you can see for yourself how highly modern and civilized they are becoming. I am sure you will have no trouble.”

Louise had not altogether believed this rollicking letter, but it had helped her to her decision.

Wind City and still no Indians; but there was the dear hero of her childhood. He was much changed to be sure; his big joints had taken on more flesh and he had gained in dignity of deportment what he had lost in ease of movement. His once merry eyes had grown keen with the years of just judging. The lips that had laughed so much in the old days were set in lines of sternness. Judge Hammond Dale was a man who would live up to the tenets of his high calling without fear or favor, through good and evil report. Yet through all his gravity of demeanor and the pride of his integrity, Louise instinctively felt his kindliness and loved him for it. The loneliness fell away from her and a measure of content had come in its place, until the letter had come from the State’s attorney up in the Kemah County:—

My dear Miss Dale:—The eighteenth of August is the date set for the preliminary hearing of Jesse Black. Will you come and take the testimony? I am very anxious that the testimony be taken by a competent reporter and shall be grateful to you if you decide to come.

The Judge will tell you about our poor accommodations. Let me recommend to your consideration some good friends of mine, the Willistons, father and daughter. They live three miles northwest of Kemah. The Judge will remember Williston, George Williston of the Lazy S. They are cultured people, though their way of living is necessarily primitive. I am sure you will like it better there than at our shabby little hotel, which is a rendezvous for a pretty rough class of men, especially at court time.

If you decide to come, Mary Williston will meet you at Velpen. Please let me know your decision.

Very sincerely, Richard Gordon.

So here she was, going into the Indian country at last. A big State, South Dakota, and the phases of its civilization manifold. Having come so far, to refuse to go on seemed like turning back with her hand already on the plough, so with a stout heart she had wired Richard Gordon that she would go. But it was pretty hard now, to be sure, and pretty dreary, coming into Velpen knowing that she would see no one she knew in all the wide, wide world. The thought choked her and the impish demon, Loneliness, he of the smirk and horns and devil’s eyes, loomed leeringly before her again. Blindly, she picked up her umbrella, suit-case, and rain-coat.

“Homesick?” asked the kindly brakeman, with a consolatory grin as he came to assist her with her baggage.

She bit her lip in mortification to think she had carried her feelings so palpably on her sleeve. But she nodded honestly.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” sympathized the brakeman. His rough heart had gone out to the slim, fair-haired young creature with the vague trouble in her eyes.

“Thank you,” said Louise, gratefully.

There was a moment’s bewilderment on the station platform. There was no one anywhere who seemed to be Mary—no one who might be looking for her. It was evening, too, the lonesome evening to those away from home, when thoughts stab and memories sap the courage. Some one pushed her rudely aside. She was in the way of the trucks.

“Chuck it! None o’ your sass, my lad! There’s my fist. Heft it if you don’t put no stock in its looks. Git out o’ this, I say!”

The voice was big and convincing. The man wasn’t so big, but some way he looked convincing, too. The truckman stepped aside, but with plucky temerity answered back.

“Get out yourself! Think you own the whole cattle country jest ’cause you herd a few ornery, pink-eyed, slab-sided critters for your salt? Well, the railroad ain’t the range, le’ me tell you that. Jest you run your own affairs, will you?”

“Thanky. Glad to. And as my affairs is at present a lady, I’ll thank you to jest trundle this here railroad offspring to the back o’ this here lady—the back, I say—back ain’t front, is it? Wasn’t where I was eddicated. That’s better. And ef you ain’t satisfied, why, I belong to the Three Bars. Ever hear o’ the Three Bars? Ef I’m out, jest leave word with the Boss, will you? He’ll see I git the word. Yes, sir, you ol’ hoss thief, I belong to the Three Bars.”

The encounter was not without interested spectators. Louise’s brakeman was grinning broadly at the discomfiture of his fellow-employee. Louise herself had forgotten her predicament in the sudden whirlwind of which she was the innocent storm-centre.

The cowboy with the temper, having completely routed the enemy to the immense satisfaction of the onlookers, though why, no one knew exactly, nor what the merits of the case, turned abruptly to Louise.

“Are you her?” he asked, with a perceptible cooling of his assertive bravado.

“I don’t know,” said Louise, smiling fearlessly at her champion, though inwardly quaking at the intuition that had flashed upon her that this strange, uncouth man had come to take the place of Mary. “The boldness and license of the cowboys,” her aunt had argued. There could be no doubt of the boldness. Would the rest of the statement hold good?

“I think maybe I am, though I am Louise Dale, the new court reporter. I expected Miss Mary Williston to meet me.”

“Then you are her,” said the man, with renewed cheerfulness, seizing her suit-case and striding off. “Come along. We’ll git some supper afore we start. You’re dead tired, more’n likely. It’ll be moonlight so’t won’t matter ef we are late a gittin’ home.”

“Court reporter! I’ll be doggoned!” muttered the brakeman. “The new girl from down East. A pore little white lamb among a pack o’ wolves and coyotes, and homesick a’ready. No wonder! I’ll be takin’ you back to-morrow, I’m thinkin’, young lady.”

He didn’t know the “little white lamb” who had come to help Paul Langford and Dick Gordon in their big fight.

[CHAPTER IV—“MAGGOT”]

An hour prior to this little episode, Jim Munson had sauntered up to the ticket window only to find that the train from the East was forty minutes late. He turned away with a little shrug of relief. It was a foreign role he was playing,—this assumption of the duties of a knight in dancing attendance on strange ladies. Secretly, he chafed under it; outwardly, he was magnificently indifferent. He had a reputation to sustain, a reputation of having yet to meet that which would lower his proud boast that he was afraid of nothing under the sun, neither man nor devil. But he doubted his ability so to direct the point of view of the Boss or the Scribe or the rest of the boys of the Three Bars ranch, who were on a still hunt for his spot of vulnerability.

The waiting-room was hot,—unbearably so to a man who practically lived in the open. He strolled outside and down the tracks. He found himself wishing the train had been on time. Had it been so, it—the impending meeting—would now have been a thing of the forgotten past. He must needs fortify himself all over again. But sauntering down the track toward the stockyards, he filled his cob pipe, lighted it, and was comforted. He had a forty-minute reprieve.

The boys had tried most valiantly to persuade him to “fix up” for this event. He had scorned them indignantly. If he was good enough as he was—black woollen shirt, red neckerchief and all—for men, just so was he good enough for any female that ever lived. So he assumed a little swagger as he stepped over the ties, and tried to make himself believe that he was glad he had not allowed himself to be corrupted by proffers of blue shirts and white neckerchiefs.

He was approaching the stockyards. There was movement there. Sounds of commands, blows, profane epithets, and worried bawlings changed the placid evening calm into noisy strife. It is always a place interesting to cowmen. Jim relegated thoughts of the coming meeting to the background while he leaned on the fence, and, with idle absorption, watched the loading of cattle into a stock car. A switch engine, steaming and spluttering, stood ready to make way for another car so soon as the present one should be laden. He was not the only spectator. Others were before him. Two men strolled up to the side opposite as he settled down to musing interest.

“Gee!” he swore gently under his breath, “ef that ain’t Bill Brown! Yep. It is, for a fac’. Wonder what he’s a shippin’ now for!” He scrambled lightly over the high fence of the pen.

“Hullo, there, Bill Brown!” he yelled, genially, making his way as one accustomed through the bunch of reluctant, excited cattle.

“Hullo yourself, Jim! What you doin’ in town?” responded the man addressed, pausing in his labor to wipe the streaming moisture from his face. He fanned himself vigorously with his drooping hat while he talked.

“Gal huntin’,” answered Jim, soberly and despondently.

“Hell!” Brown surveyed him with astonished but sympathetic approbation. “Hell!” he repeated. “You don’t mean it, do you, Jim, honest? Come, now, honest? So you’ve come to it, at last, have you? Well, well! What’s comin’ over the Three Bars? What’ll the boys say?”

He came nearer and lowered his voice to a confidential tone. “Say, Jim, how did it come about? And who’s the lady? Lord, Jim, you of all people!” He laughed uproariously.

“Aw, come off!” growled Jim, in petulant scorn. “You make me tired! You’re plumb luney, that’s what you are. I’m after the new gal reporter. She’s due on that low-down, ornery train. Wish—it—was in Kingdom Come. Yep, I do, for a fac’.”

“Oh, well, never mind! I didn’t mean anything,” laughed Brown, good-naturedly. “But it does beat the band, Jim, now doesn’t it, how you people scare at petticoats. They ain’t pizen—honest.”

Jim looked on idly. Occasionally, he condescended to head a rebellious steer shute-wards. Out beyond, it was still and sweet and peaceful, and the late afternoon had put on that thin veil of coolness which is a God-given refreshment after the heat of the day. But here in the pen all was confusion. The raucous cattle-calls of the cowboys smote the evening air startlingly.

“Here, Bill Brown!” he exclaimed suddenly, “where did you run across that critter?” He slapped the shoulder of a big, raw-boned, long-eared steer as he spoke. The animal was on the point of being driven up the shute.

“What you want to know for?” asked Brown in surprise.

“Reason ’nough. That critter belongs to us, that’s why; and I want to know where you got him, that’s what I want to know.”

“You’re crazy, Jim! Why, I bought that fellow from Jesse Black t’ other day. I’ve got a bill-of-sale for him. I’m shippin’ a couple of cars to Sioux City and bought him to send along. That’s on the square.”

“I don’t doubt it—s’ far as you’re concerned, Bill Brown,” said Jim, “but that’s our critter jest the same, and I’ll jest tote ’im along ’f you’ve no objections.”

“Well, I guess not!” said Brown, laconically.

“Look here, Bill Brown,” Jim was getting hot-headedly angry, “didn’t you know Jesse Black stands trial to-morrow for rustlin’ that there very critter from the Three Bars ranch?”

“No, I didn’t,” Brown answered, shortly. “Any case?”

“I guess yes! Williston o’ the Lazy S saw this very critter on that island where Jesse Black holds out.” He proceeded to relate minutely the story to which Williston was going to swear on the morrow. “But,” he concluded, “Jesse’s goin’ to fight like hell against bein’ bound over.”

“Well, well,” said Brown, perplexedly. “But the brand, Jim, it’s not yours or Jesse’s either.”

“’Quainted with any J R ranch in these parts?” queried Jim, shrewdly. “I ain’t.”

“Well, neither am I,” confessed Brown, “but that’s not sayin’ there ain’t one somewhere. Maybe we can trace it back.”

“Shucks!” exploded Jim.

“Maybe you’re right, Jim, but I don’t propose to lose the price o’ that animal less’n I have to. You can’t blame me for that. I paid good money for it. If it’s your’n, why, of course, it’s your’n. But I want to be sure first. Sure you’d know him, Jim? How could you be so blamed sure? Your boss must range five thousand head.”

“Know him? Know Mag? I’d know Mag ef my eyes were full o’ soundin’ cataracts. He’s an old and tried friend o’ mine. The meanest critter the Lord ever let live and that’s a fac’. But the Boss calls ’im his maggot. Seems to actually cherish a kind o’ ’fection for the ornery critter, and says the luck o’ the Three Bar would sort o’ peak and pine ef he should ever git rid o’ the pesky brute. Maybe he’s right. Leastwise, the critter’s his, and when a thing’s yours, why, it’s yours and that’s all there is about it. By cracky, the Boss is some mad! You’d think him and that walleyed, cross-grained son-of-a-gun had been kind and lovin’ mates these many years. Well, I ain’t met up with this ornery critter for some time. Hullo there, Mag! Look kind o’ sneakin’, now, don’t you, wearin’ that outlandish and unbeknownst J R?”

Bill Brown thoughtfully surveyed the steer whose ownership was thus so unexpectedly disputed.

“You hold him,” insisted Jim. “Ef he ain’t ours, you can send him along with your next shipment, can’t you? What you wobblin’ about? Ain’t afraid the Boss’ll claim what ain’t his, are you, Bill Brown?”

“Well, I can’t he’p myself, I guess,” said Brown, in a tone of voice which told plainly of his laudable effort to keep his annoyance in subjection to his good fellowship. “You send Langford down here first thing in the morning. If he says the critter’s his’n, that ends it.”

Now that he had convinced his quondam acquaintance, the present shipper, to his entire satisfaction, Jim glanced at his watch with ostentatious ease. His time had come. If all the minutes of all the time to come should be as short as those forty had been, how soon he, Jim Munson, cow-puncher, would have ridden them all into the past. But his “get away” must be clean and dignified.

“Likely bunch you have there,” he said, casually, turning away with unassumed reluctance.

“Fair to middlin’,” said Brown with pride.

“Shippin’ to Sioux City, you said?”

“Yep.”

“Well, so long.”

“So long. Shippin’ any these days, Jim?”

“Nope. Boss never dribbles ’em out. When he ships he ships. Ain’t none gone over the rails since last Fall.”

He stepped off briskly and vaulted the fence with as lightsome an air as though he were bent on the one errand his heart would choose, and swung up the track carelessly humming a tune. But he had a vise-like grip on his cob pipe. His teeth bit through the frail stem. It split. He tossed the remains away with a gesture of nervous contempt. A whistle sounded. He quickened his pace. If he missed her,—well, the Boss was a good fellow, took a lot of nonsense from the boys, but there were things he would not stand for. Jim did not need to be told that this would be one of them.

The platform was crowded. The yellow sunlight fell slantingly on the gay groups.

“Aw, Munson, you’re bluffin’,” jested the mail carrier. “You ain’t lookin’ fer nobody; you know you ain’t. You ain’t got no folks. Don’t believe you never had none. Never heard of ’em.”

“Lookin’ for my uncle,” explained Jim, serenely. “Rich old codger from the State o’ Pennsylvaney some’ers. Ain’t got nobody but me left.”

“Aw, come off! What you givin’ us?”

But Jim only winked and slouched off, prime for more adventures. He was enjoying himself hugely,—when he was not thinking of petticoats.

[CHAPTER V—AT THE BON AMI]

Unlike most of those who ride much, her escort was a fast walker. Louise had trouble in keeping up with him, though she had always considered herself a good pedestrian. But Jim Munson was laboring under strange embarrassment. He was red-facedly conscious of the attention he was attracting striding up the inclined street from the station in the van of the prettiest and most thoroughbred girl who had struck Velpen this long time.

Not that he objected to attention under normal conditions. Not he! He courted it. His chief aim in life seemed to be to throw the limelight of publicity, first, on the Three Bars ranch, as the one and only in the category of ranches, and to be connected with it in some way, however slight, the unquestioned aim and object of existence of every man, woman, and child in the cattle country; secondly, on Paul Langford, the very boss of bosses, whose master mind was the prop and stay of the Northwest, if not of all Christendom; and lastly upon himself, the modest, but loyal servitor in this Paradise on earth. But girls were far from normal conditions. There were no women at the Three Bars. There never had been any woman at the Three Bars within the memory of man. To be sure, Williston’s little girl had sometimes ridden over on an errand, but she didn’t count. This—this was the real thing, and he didn’t know just how to deal with it. He needed time to enlarge his sight to this broadened horizon.

He glanced with nonchalance over his shoulder. After all, she was only a girl, and not such a big one either. She wore longer skirts than Williston’s girl, but he didn’t believe she was a day older. He squared about immediately, and what he had meant to say he never said, on account of an unaccountable thickening of his tongue.

Presently, he bolted into a building, which proved to be the Bon Ami, a restaurant under the direct supervision of the fat, voluble, and tragic Mrs. Higgins, where the men from the other side of the river had right of way and unlimited credit.

“What’ll you have?” he asked, hospitably, the familiar air of the Bon Ami bringing him back to his accustomed self-confident swagger.

“Might I have some tea and toast, please?” said Louise, sinking into a chair at the nearest table, with two startling yet amusing thoughts rampant in her brain. One was, that she wished Aunt Helen could have seen her swinging along in the wake of this typical “bold and licentious” man, and calmly and comfortably sitting down to a cosy little supper for two at a public eating house; the other startling thought was to the effect that the invitation was redolent with suggestiveness, and she wondered if she was not expected to say, “A whiskey for me, please.”

“Guess you kin,” answered Jim, wonder in his voice at the exceeding barrenness of the order. “Mrs. Higgins, hello there, Mrs. Higgins! I say, there, bring on some tea and toast for the lady!”

“Where is the Three Bars?” asked Louise, her thoughts straying to the terrors of a fifteen-mile drive through a strange and uncanny country with a stranger and yet more uncanny man. She had accepted him without question. He was part and parcel with the strangeness of her new position. But the suddenness of the transition from idle conjecture to startling reality had raised her proud head and she looked this new development squarely in the face without outward hint of inward perturbation.

“Say, where was you raised?” asked Jim, with tolerant scorn, between huge mouthfuls of boiled pork and cabbage, interspersed with baked potatoes, hot rolls, and soggy dumplings, shovelled in with knife, fork, or spoon. He occasionally anticipated dessert by making a sudden sortie into the quarter of an immense custard pie, hastening the end by means of noisy draughts of steaming coffee. Truly, the Three Bars connection had the fat of the land at the Bon Ami.

“Why, it’s the Three Bars that’s bringin’ you here. Didn’t you know that? There’s nary a man in the hull country with backbone enough to keep him off all-fours ’ceptin’ Paul Langford. Um. You just try once to walk over the Boss, will you? Lord! What a grease spot you’d make!”

“Mr. Gordon isn’t being walked over, is he?” asked Louise, finished with her tea and toast and impatient to be off.

“Oh, Gordon? Pretty decent sort o’ chap. Right idees. Don’t know much about handlin’ hoss thieves and sich. Ain’t smooth enough. Acted kind o’ like a chicken with its head cut off till the Boss got into the roundup.”

“Oh!” said Louise, whose conception of the young counsel for the State did not tally with this delineation.

“Yep, Miss, this here’s the Boss’s doin’s. Yep. Lord! What’ll that gang look like when we are through with ’em? Spendin’ the rest o’ their days down there in Sioux Falls, meditatin’ on the advisability o’ walkin’ clear o’ the toes o’ the Three Bars in the future and cussin’ their stupendified stupidity in foolin’ even once with the Three Bars. Yep, sir—yep, ma’am, I mean,—Jesse Black and his gang have acted just like pesky, little plum’-fool moskeeters, and we’re goin’ to slap ’em. The cheek of ’em, lightin’ on the Three Bars! Lord!”

“Mr. Williston informed, did he not?”

“Williston? Oh, yes, he informed, but he’d never ’a’ done it if it hadn’t ’a’ been for the Boss. The ol’ jellyfish wouldn’t ’a’ had the nerve to inform without backin’, as sure as a stone wall. The Boss is a doin’ this, I tell you, Miss. But Williston’s a goin’ on the stand to-morrer all right, and so am I.”

The two cowboys at the corner table had long since finished their supper. They now lighted bad-smelling cigars and left the room. To Louise’s great relief, Munson rose, too. He was back very soon with a neat little runabout and a high-spirited team of bays.

“Boss’s private,” explained Jim with pride. “Nothin’ too good for a lady, so the Boss sent this and me to take keer o’ it. And o’ you, too, Miss,” he added, as an afterthought.

He held the lines in his brown, muscular hands, lovingly, while he stowed away Louise’s belongings and himself snugly in the seat, and then the blood burned hot and stinging through his bronzed, tough skin, for suddenly in his big, honest, untrained sensibilities was born the consciousness that the Boss would have stowed away the lady first. It was an embarrassing moment. Louise saved the day by climbing in unconcernedly after him and tucking the linen robe over her skirt.

“It will be a dusty drive, won’t it?” she asked, simply.

“Miss, you’re a—dandy,” said Jim as simply.

As they drove upon the pontoon bridge, Louise looked back at the little town on the bluffs, and felt a momentary choking in her throat. It was a strange place, yet it had tendrils reaching homeward. The trail beyond was obscurely marked and not easy to discern. She turned to her companion and asked quickly: “Why didn’t Mary come?”

“Great guns! Did I forgit to tell you? Williston’s got the stomach-ache to beat the band and Mary’s got to physic him up ’gin to-morrer. We’ve got to git him on that stand if it takes the hull Three Bars to hol’ him up and the gal a pourin’ physic down him between times. Yep, Ma’am. He was pizened. You see, everybody that ate any meat last night was took sick with gripin’ cramps, yep; but Williston he was worse’n all, he bein’ a hearty eater. He was a stayin’ in town over night on this preliminary business, and Dick Gordon he was took, too, but not so bad, bein’ what you might call a light eater. The Boss and me we drove home after all, though we’d expected to stay for supper. The pesky coyotes got fooled that time. Yep, Ma’am, no doubt about it in the world. Friends o’ Jesse’s that we ain’t able to lay hands on yit pizened that there meat. Yep, no doubt about it. Dick was in an awful sweat about you. Was bound he was a comin’ after you hisself, sick as he was, when we found Mary was off the count. So then the Boss was a comin’ and they fit and squabbled for an hour who could be best spared, when I, comin’ in, settled it in a jiffy by offerin’ my services, which was gladly accepted. When there’s pizenin’ goin’ on, why, the Boss’s place is hum. And nothin’ would do but the Boss’s own particular outfit. He never does things by halves, the Boss don’t. So I hikes home after it and then hikes here.”

“I am very grateful to him, I am sure,” murmured Louise, smiling.

And Jim, daring to look upon her smiling face, clear eyes, and soft hair under the jaunty French sailor hat, found himself wondering why there was no woman at the Three Bars. With the swift, half-intuitive thought, the serpent entered Eden.

[CHAPTER VI—“NOTHIN’ BUT A HOSS THIEF, ANYWAY”]

The island teemed with early sunflowers and hints of goldenrod yet to come. The fine, white, sandy soil deadened the sound of the horses’ hoofs. They seemed to be spinning through space. Under the cottonwoods it grew dusky and still.

At the toll house a dingy buckboard in a state of weird dilapidation, with a team of shaggy buckskin ponies, stood waiting. Jim drew up. Two men were lounging in front of the shanty, chatting to the toll-man.

“Hello, Jim!” called one of them, a tall, slouching fellow with sandy coloring.

“Now, how the devil did you git so familiar with my name?” growled Jim.

“The Three Bars is gettin’ busy these days,” spoke up the second man, with an insolent grin.

“You bet it is,” bragged Jim. “When the off’cers o’ the law git to sleepin’ with hoss thieves and rustlers, and take two weeks to arrest a bunch of ’em, when they know prezactly where they keep theirselves, and have to have special deputies app’inted over ’em five or six times and then let most o’ the bunch slip through their fingers, it’s time for some one to git busy. And when Jesse Black and his gang are so desp’rit they pizen the chief witnesses—”

A gentle pressure on his arm stopped him. He turned inquiringly.

“I wouldn’t say any more,” whispered Louise. “Let’s get on.”

The hint was sufficient, and with the words, “Right you are, Miss Reporter, we’ll be gittin’ on,” Jim paid his toll and spoke to his team.

“Just wait a bit, will you?” spoke up the sandy man.

“What for?”

“We’re not just ready.”

“Well, we are,” shortly.

“We aren’t, and we don’t care to be passed, you know.”

He spoke indifferently. In deference to Louise, Jim waited. The men smoked on carelessly. The toll-man fidgeted.

“You go to hell! The Three Bars ain’t waitin’ on no damned hoss thieves,” said Jim, suddenly.

His nervous team sprang forward. Quick as a flash the sandy man was in the buckboard. He struck the bays a stinging blow with his rawhide, and as they swerved aside he swung into the straight course to the narrow bridge of boats. In another moment the way would be blocked. With a burning oath Jim, keeping to the side of the steep incline till the river mire cut him off, deliberately turned his stanch little team squarely, and crowded them forward against the shaggy buckskins. It was team against team. Louise, clinging tightly to the seat, lips pressed together to keep back any sound, felt a wild, inexplicable thrill of confidence in the strength of the man beside her.

The bays were pitifully, cruelly lashed by the enraged owner of the buckskins, but true as steel to the familiar voice that had guided them so often and so kindly, they gave not nor faltered. There was a snapping of broken wood, a wrench, a giving way, and the runabout sprang over debris of broken wheel and wagon-box to the narrow confines of the pontoon bridge.

“The Three Bars is gettin’ busy!” gibed Jim over his shoulder.

“It’s a sorry day for you and yours,” cried the other, in black and ugly wrath.

“We ain’t afeared. You’re nothin’ but a hoss thief, anyway!” responded Jim, gleefully, as a parting shot.

“Now what do you suppose was their game?” he asked of the girl at his side.

“I don’t know,” answered Louise, thoughtfully. “But I thought it not wise to say too much to them. You are a witness, I believe you said.”

“Then you think they are part o’ the gang?”

“I consider them at least sympathizers, don’t you? They seemed down on the Three Bars.”

In the Indian country at last. Mile after mile of level, barren stretches after the hill region had been left behind. Was there no end to the thirst-inspiring, monotonous, lonely reach of cacti? Prairie dogs, perched in front of their holes, chattered and scolded at them. The sun went down and a refreshing coolness crept over the hard, baked earth. Still, there was nothing but distance anywhere in all the land, and a feeling of desolation swept over the girl.

The air of August was delicious now that night was coming on. There was no wind, but the swift, unflagging pace of the Boss’s matched team made a stiff breeze to play in their faces. It was exhilarating. The listlessness and discouragement of the day were forgotten. Throwing her rain-coat over her shoulders, Louise felt a clumsy but strangely gentle hand helping to draw it closer around her. Someway the action, simple as it was, reminded her of the look in that brakeman’s eyes, when he had asked her if she were homesick. Did this man think she was homesick, too? She was grateful; they were very kind. What a lot of good people there were in the world! Now, Jim Munson did not call her “little white lamb” to himself, the metaphor never entered his mind; but in his big, self-confident heart he did feel a protecting tenderness for her. She was not like any woman he had ever seen, and it was a big, lonesome country for a slip of a girl like her.

The moon came up. Then there were miles of white moonlight and lonely plain. But for some time now there has been a light in front of them. It is as if it must be a will-o’-the-wisp. They never seem to get to it. But at last they are there. The door is wide open. A pleasant odor of bacon and coffee is wafted out to the tired travellers.

“Come right in,” says the cheery voice of Mary. “How tired you must be, Miss Dale. Tie up, Jim, and come in and eat something before you go. Well, you can eat again—two suppers won’t hurt you. I have kept things warm for you. Your train must have been late. Yes, Dad is better, thank you. He’ll be all right in the morning.”

[CHAPTER VII—THE PRELIMINARY]

Very early in the morning of the day set for the preliminary hearing of Jesse Black, the young owner of the Three Bars ranch rode over to Velpen. He identified and claimed the animal held over from shipment by Jim’s persuasion. Brown gave possession with a rueful countenance.

“First time Billy Brown ever was taken in,” he said, with great disgust.

Langford met with no interruption to his journey, either going or coming, although that good cowpuncher of his, Jim Munson, had warned him to look sharp to his pistols and mind the bridge. Jim being of a somewhat belligerent turn of mind, his boss had not taken the words with much seriousness. As for the fracas at the pontoon, cowmen are touchy when it comes to a question of precedence, and it might well be that the inflammable Jim had brought the sudden storm down on his head. Paul Langford rode through the sweet early summer air without let or hindrance and looking for none. He was jubilant. Now was Williston’s story verified. The county attorney, Richard Gordon, had considered Williston’s story, coupled with his reputation for strict honesty, strong and sufficient enough to bind Jesse Black over to appear at the next regular term of the circuit court. Under ordinary circumstances, the State really had an excellent chance of binding over; but it had to deal with Jesse Black, and Jesse Black had flourished for many years west of the river with an unsavory character, but with an almost awesome reputation for the phenomenal facility with which he slipped out of the net in which the law—in the person of its unpopular exponent, Richard Gordon—was so indefatigably endeavoring to enmesh him. The State was prepared for a hard fight. But now—here was the very steer Williston saw on the island with its Three Bars brand under Black’s surveillance. Williston would identify it as the same. He, Langford, would swear to his own animal. The defence would not know he had regained possession and would not have time to readjust its evidence. It would fall down and hurt itself for the higher court, and Dick Gordon would know how to use any inadvertencies against it—when the time came. No wonder Langford was light-hearted. In all his arrogant and unhampered career, he had never before received such an affront to his pride and his sense of what was due to one of the biggest outfits that ranged cattle west of the river. Woe to him who had dared tamper with the concerns of Paul Langford of the Three Bars.

Williston drove in from the Lazy S in ample time for the mid-day dinner at the hotel—the hearing was set for two o’clock—but his little party contented itself with a luncheon prepared at home, and packed neatly and appetizingly in a tin bucket. It was not likely there would be a repetition of bad meat. It would be poor policy. Still, one could not be sure, and it was most important that Williston ate no bad meat that day.

Gordon met them in the hot, stuffy, little parlor of the hotel.

“It was good of you to come,” he said to Louise, with grave sincerity.

“I didn’t want to,” confessed Louise, honestly. “I’m afraid it is too big and lonesome for me. I am sure I should have gone back to Velpen last night to catch the early train had it not been for Mary. She is so—good.”

“The worst is over now that you have conquered your first impulse to fly,” he said.

“I cried, though. I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t help it. You see I never was so far from home before.”

He was an absorbed, hard-working lawyer. Years of contact with the plain, hard realities of rough living in a new country had dried up, somewhat, his stream of sentiment. Maybe the source was only blocked with debris, but certainly the stream was running dry. He could not help thinking that a girl who cries because she is far from home had much better stay at home and leave the grave things which are men’s work to men. But he was a gentleman and a kindly one, so he answered, quietly, “I trust you will like us better when you know us better,” and, after a few more commonplaces, went his way.

“There’s a man,” said Louise, thoughtfully, on the way to McAllister’s office “I like him, Mary.”

“And yet there are men in this county who would kill him if they dared.”

“Mary! what do you mean? Are there then so many cut-throats in this awful country?”

“I think there are many desperate men among the rustlers who would not hesitate to kill either Paul Langford or Richard Gordon since these prosecutions have begun. There are also many good people who think Mr. Gordon is just stirring up trouble and putting the county to expense when he can have no hope of conviction. They say that his failures encourage the rustlers more than an inactive policy would.”

“People who argue like that are either tainted with dishonesty themselves or they are foolish, one of the two,” said Louise, with conviction.

“Mr. Gordon has one stanch supporter, anyway,” said Mary, smiling. “Maybe I had better tell him. Precious little encouragement or sympathy he gets, poor fellow.”

“Please do not,” replied Louise, quickly. “I wonder if my friend, Mr. Jim Munson, has managed to escape ‘battle, murder, and sudden death,’ including death by poison, and is on hand with his testimony.”

As they approached the office, the crowd of men around the doorway drew aside to let them pass.

“Our chances of worming ourselves through that jam seem pretty slim to me,” whispered Mary, glancing into the already overcrowded room.

“Let me make a way for you,” said Paul Langford, as he separated himself from the group of men standing in front, and came up to them.

“I have watered my horse,” he said, flashing a merry smile at Mary as he began shoving his big shoulders through the press, closely followed by the two young women.

It was a strange assembly through which they pressed; ranchmen and cowboys, most of them, just in from ranch and range, hot and dusty from long riding, perspiring freely, redolent of strong tobacco and the peculiar smell that betokens recent and intimate companionship with that part and parcel of the plains, the horse. The room was indeed hot and close and reeking with bad odors. There were also present a large delegation of cattle dealers and saloon men from Velpen, and some few Indians from Rosebud Agency, whose curiosity was insatiable where the courts were concerned, far from picturesque in their ill-fitting, nondescript cowboy garments.

Yet they were kindly, most of the men gathered there. Though at first they refused, with stolid resentment, to be thus thrust aside by the breezy and aggressive owner of the Three Bars, planting their feet the more firmly on the rough, uneven floor, and serenely oblivious to any right of way so arrogantly demanded by the big shoulders, yet, when they perceived for whom the way was being made, most of them stepped hastily aside with muttered and abashed apologies. Here and there, however, though all made way, there would be no red-faced or stammering apology. Sometimes the little party was followed by insolent eyes, sometimes by malignant ones. Had Mary Williston spoken truly when she said the will for bloodshed was not lacking in the county?

But if there was aught of hatred or enmity in the heavy air of the improvised court-room for others besides the high-minded young counsel for law and order, Mary Williston seemed serenely unconscious of it. She held her head proudly. Most of these men she knew. She had done a man’s work among them for two years and more. In her man’s work of riding the ranges she had had good fellowship with many of them. After to-day much of this must end. Much blame would accrue to her father for this day’s work, among friends as well as enemies, for the fear of the law-defiers was an omnipresent fear with the small owner, stalking abroad by day and by night. But Mary was glad and there was a new dignity about her that became her well, and that grew out of this great call to rally to the things that count.

At the far end of the room they found the justice of the peace enthroned behind a long table. His Honor, Mr. James R. McAllister, more commonly known as Jimmie Mac, was a ranchman on a small scale. He was ignorant, but of an overweening conceit. He had been a justice of the peace for several years, and labored under the mistaken impression that he knew some law; but Gordon, on short acquaintance, had dubbed him “Old Necessity” in despairing irony, after a certain high light of early territorial days who “knew no law.” Instead of deciding the facts in the cases brought before him from the point of view of an ordinary man of common sense, McAllister went on the theory that each case was fraught with legal questions upon which the result of the case hung; and he had a way of placing himself in the most ridiculous lights by arguing long and arduously with skilled attorneys upon questions of law. He made the mistake of always trying to give a reason for his rulings. His rulings, sometimes, were correct, but one would find it hard to say the same of his reasons for them.

Louise’s little table was drawn closely before the window nearest the court. She owed this thoughtfulness to Gordon, who, nevertheless, was not in complete sympathy with her, because she had cried. The table was on the sunny side, but there was a breeze out of the west and it played refreshingly over her face, and blew short strands of her fair hair there also. To Gordon, wrapped up as he was in graver matters, her sweet femininity began to insist on a place in his mental as well as his physical vision. She was exquisitely neat and trim in her white shirt-waist with its low linen collar and dark blue ribbon tie of the same shade as her walking skirt, and the smart little milliner’s bow on her French sailor hat, though it is to be doubted if Gordon observed the harmony. She seemed strangely out of place in this room, so bare of comfort, so stuffy and stenchy and smoke-filled; yet, after all, she seemed perfectly at home here. The man in Gordon awoke, and he was glad she had not stayed at home or gone away because she cried.

Yes, Jim was there—and swaggering. It was impossible for Jim not to swagger a little on any occasion. The impulse to swagger had been born in him. It had been carefully nurtured from the date of his first connection with the Three Bars. He bestowed an amiable grin of recognition on the new reporter from the far side of the room, which was not very far.

The prisoner was brought in. His was a familiar personality. He was known to most men west of the river—if not by personal acquaintance, certainly by hearsay. Many believed him to be the animating mind of a notorious gang of horse thieves and cattle rustlers that had been operating west of the river for several years. Lax laws were their nourishment. They polluted the whole. It was a deadly taint to fasten itself on men’s relations. Out of it grew fear, bribery, official rottenness, perjury. There was an impudent half smile on his lips. He was a tall, lean, slouching-shouldered fellow. To-day, his jaws were dark with beard bristles of several days’ standing. He bore himself with an easy, indifferent manner, and chewed tobacco enjoyingly.

Louise, glancing casually around at the mass of interested, sunbrowned faces, suddenly gave a little start of surprise. Not far in front of Jimmie Mac’s table stood the man of the sandy coloring who had so insolently disputed their right of way the day before. His hard, light eyes, malignant, sinister, significant, were fixed upon the prisoner as he slouched forward to hear his arraignment. The man in custody yawned occasionally. He was bored. His whole body had a lazy droop. So far as Louise could make out he gave no sign of recognition of the man of sandy coloring.

Then came the first great surprise of this affair of many surprises. Jesse Black waived examination. It came like a thunderbolt to the prosecution. It was not Black’s way of doing business, and it was generally believed that, as Munson had so forcibly though inelegantly expressed it to Billy Brown, “He would fight like hell” to keep out of the circuit courts. He would kill this incipient Nemesis in the bud. What, then, had changed him? The county attorney had rather looked for a hard-fought defence—a shifting of the burden of responsibility for the misbranding to another, who would, of course, be off somewhere on a business trip, to be absent an indefinite length of time; or it might be he would try to make good a trumped-up story that he had but lately purchased the animal from some Indian cattle-owner from up country who claimed to have a bill-of-sale from Langford. He would not have been taken aback had Black calmly produced a bill-of-sale.

There were lines about the young attorney’s mouth, crow’s feet diverging from his eyes; his forehead was creased, too. He was a tall man, slight of build, with drooping shoulders. One of the noticeable things about him was his hands. They were beautiful—the long, slim, white kind that attract attention, not so much, perhaps, on account of their graceful lines, as because they are so seldom still. They belong preëminently to a nervous temperament. Gordon had trained himself to immobility of expression under strain, but his hands he had not been able so to discipline. They were always at something, fingering the papers on his desk, ruffling his hair, or noisily drumming. Now he folded them as if to coerce them into quiet. He had handsome eyes, also, too keen, maybe, for everyday living; they would be irresistible if they caressed.

The absoluteness of the surprise flushed his clean-shaven face a little, although his grave immobility of expression underwent not a flicker. It was a surprise, but it was a good surprise. Jesse Black was bound over under good and sufficient bond to appear at the next regular term of the circuit court in December. That much accomplished, now he could buckle down for the big fight. How often had he been shipwrecked in the shifting sands of the really remarkable decisions of “Old Necessity” and his kind. This time, as by a miracle, he had escaped sands and shoals and sunken rocks, and rode in deep water.

A wave of enlightenment swept over Jim Munson.

“Boss,” he whispered, “that gal reporter’s a hummer.”

“How so?” whispered Langford, amused. He proceeded to take an interested, if hasty, inventory of her charms. “What a petite little personage, to be sure! Almost too colorless, though. Why, Jim, she can’t hold a tallow candle to Williston’s girl.”

“Who said she could?” demanded Jim, with a fine scorn and much relieved to find the Boss so unappreciative. Eden might not be lost to them after all. Strict justice made him add: “But she’s a wise one. Spotted them blamed meddlin’ hoss thieves right from the word go. Yep. That’s a fac’.”

“What ‘blamed meddlin’ hoss thieves,’ Jim? You are on intimate terms with so many gentlemen of that stripe,—at least your language so leads us to presume,—that I can’t keep up with the procession.”

“At the bridge yistidy. I told you ’bout it. Saw ’em first at the Bon Amy—but they must a trailed me to the stockyards. She spotted ’em right away. She’s a cute ’n. Made me shet my mouth when I was a blabbin’ too much, jest before the fun began. Oh, she’s a cute ’n!”

“Who were they, Jim?”

“One of ’em, I’m a thinkin’, was Jake Sanderson, a red-headed devil who came up here from hell, I reckon, or Wyoming, one of the two. Nobody knows his biz. But he’ll look like a stepped-on potato bug ’gainst I git through with him. Didn’t git on to t’ other feller. Will next time, you bet!”

“But what makes you think they are mixed up in this affair?”

“They had their eyes on me to see what I was a doin’ in Velpen. And I was a doin’ things, too.”

Langford gave a long, low whistle of comprehension. That would explain the unexpected waiving of examination. Jesse Black knew the steer had been recovered and saw the futility of fighting against his being bound over.

“Now, ain’t she a hummer?” insisted Jim, admiringly, but added slightingly, “Homely, though, as all git-out. Mouse-hair. Plumb homely.”

“On the contrary, I think she is plumb pretty,” retorted Langford, a laugh in his blue eyes. Jim fairly gasped with chagrin.

Unconcerned, grinning, Black slouched to the door and out. Once straighten out that lazy-looking body and you would have a big man in Jesse Black. Yes, a big one and a quick one, too, maybe. The crowd made way for him unconsciously. No one jostled him. He was a marked man from that day. His lawyer, Small, leaned back in his chair, radiating waves of self-satisfaction as though he had but just gained a disputed point. It was a manner he affected when not on the floor in a frenzy of words and muscular action.

Jim Munson contrived to pass close by Jake Sanderson.

“So you followed me to find out about Mag, did you? Heap o’ good it did you! We knew you knew,” he bragged, insultingly.

The man’s face went white with wrath.

“Damn you!” he cried. His hand dropped to his belt.

The two glared at each other like fighting cocks. Men crowded around, suddenly aware that a quarrel was on.

“The Three Bars’s a gittin’ busy!” jeered Jim.

“Come, Jim, I want you.” It was Gordon’s quiet voice. He laid a restraining hand on Munson’s over-zealous arm.

“Dick Gordon, this ain’t your put-in,” snarled Sanderson. “Git out the way!” He shoved him roughly aside. “Now, snappin’ turtle,” to Jim, “the Three Bars’d better git busy!”

A feint at a blow, a clever little twist of the feet, and Munson sprawled on the floor, men pressing back to give him the full force of the fall. They believed in fair play. But Jim, uncowed, was up with the nimbleness of a monkey.

“Hit away!” he cried, tauntingly. “I know ’nough to swear out a warrant ’gainst you! ’T won’t be so lonesome for Jesse now breakin’ stones over to Sioux Falls.”

“Jim!” It was Gordon’s quiet, authoritative voice once more. “I told you I wanted you.” He threw his arm over the belligerent’s shoulder.

“Comin’, Dick. I didn’t mean to blab so much,” Jim answered, contritely.

They moved away. Sanderson followed them up.

“Dick Gordon,” he said with cool deliberateness, “you’re too damned anxious to stick your nose into other people’s affairs. Learn your lesson, will you? My favorite stunt is to teach meddlers how to mind their own business,—this way.”

It was not a fair blow. Gordon doubled up with the force of the punch in his stomach. In a moment all was confusion. Men drew their pistols. It looked as if there was to be a free-for-all fight.

Langford sprang to his friend’s aid, using his fists with plentiful freedom in his haste to get to him.

“Never mind me,” whispered Gordon. He was leaning heavily on Jim’s shoulder. His face was pale, but he smiled reassuringly. There was something very sweet about his mouth when he smiled. “Never mind me,” he repeated. “Get the girls out of this—quick, Paul.”

Mary and Louise had sought refuge behind the big table.

“Quick, the back door!” cried Langford, leading the way; and as the three passed out, he closed the door behind them, saying, “You are all right now. Run to the hotel. I must see how Dick is coming on.”