Knights of the Range Page 5

  Upon facing homeward with Britt, the trenchant thrill of this impulse faded away. And then the ghastly business of what had threatened her, and the blood and death which had followed, resulted in a cold misery in her vitals. Only the interest in the strange man who had saved her kept Holly from reacting to that aftermath as might have one of her tenderfoot schoolmates in New Orleans who used to faint at the sight of blood.

  “Holly, you air pale aboot the gills,” spoke up Britt, solicitously, before they had ridden far. “An’ you ain’t settin’ yore saddle like you’d growed there.”

  “I’m sick—Cappy. Ride close…. But I’ll get over it.”

  “Shore you will. Grit yore teeth an’ hang on, Holly.”

  “Please don’t scold me—for riding down alone. You were right.”

  “Wal, lass, I’ll not scold you now, anyway. But I hope thet will be a lesson to you.”

  “It will be. I’ll never be headstrong again…. I promised him. Oh, he was ruthless, insulting. But no common sort!”

  “Holly, our new hand ’peared to be a lot of things—one of which was chain-lightnin’. My Gawd, but he was quick! … Holly, I’ve seen a few of the great Texas gunmen draw. Frayne would have killed any one of them today. Wonder who he is.”

  Holly was silent. She did not want to know. Frayne repelled her even more than he fascinated her. What had possessed her to such a rash and inconsidered offer? Did she already regret it? Had gratitude and pity prompted her wholly? At length she turned in her saddle to see if Frayne was coming. No horseman in sight on the grassy plain! She felt relieved. He might not follow. Then hard on this thought stirred a vague and disturbing fear that he might not keep his word. Next instant she championed him with self-accusation. He would not lie. Shame edged into her conflicting emotions. Cold, ruthless, indifferent, insulting outlaw! No man had ever dared to so criticise her. Holly rode on unaware that her sickness was gradually succumbing to stronger sensations.

  “Cappy, was I wrong?” she asked, at length.

  “How so, lass?”

  “To offer him work? … To trust him?”

  “Wal, thet’s a stumper. Fust off I was scared stiff. But I’m hedgin’, Holly. If Brazos an’ Cherokee an’ the Southards take to Frayne I’d say his acquisitions might turn oot great fer Don Carlos’ Rancho.”

  “You wouldn’t be afraid to trust him?”

  “It seems onreasonable, but I reckon I wouldn’t,” replied Britt, thoughtfully.

  “Is he—coming?” she asked, hurriedly.

  Britt glanced back over his shoulder to scan the rolling range. As he did not reply immediately, Holly grew conscious of a blank restless merging of relief and regret.

  “There he is, just toppin’ a rise,” answered Britt, at length. “Didn’t see him at fust. We might have knowed thet hombre——”

  But Holly did not hear any more of Britt’s drawl. She suddenly grew deaf and dumb to all outside stimuli. Her sickness and conjecture vanished in a rush of startling glad certainty, which as quickly affronted her. Holly, in consternation, and with a sinking of her heart, tried to take refuge in the thought that this had been the most exciting and upsetting day of her life. But an uneasy, unstable sense of weakness remained with her.

  “Holly, there’s a caravan in,” spoke up Britt, eagerly, pointing toward the long grove of cottonwoods, above which rose columns of blue smoke. “Fust from Las Animas this spring. Must be Buff Belmet. He’ll have loads of stuff fer us.”

  “Yes, indeed, and high time. Let us ride over to greet him,” replied Holly, suddenly animated.

  The afternoon sun shone on a natural scene of rangeland that never failed to awe and delight Holly. High on the gray-sloped, green-topped hill blazed the red of the old mansion. She could picture Don Carlos there in the days of the Spaniards, monarch of all he surveyed. It was hers, that indestructible home, vine-covered and weather-stained, a monument to the friendship between Don Carlos and the Indians, and likewise for her father’s day. No enemy had ever darkened that open portal. No man of any degree had ever been turned away from that door. Holly had kept faith with father and grandfather. She prayed that she might still do so in this wilder day yet to come.

  Soon the galloping horses reached the zone of cottonwoods, and then the wide clear brook babbling over gravelly bars. In the long half-circle on the other side, the caravan had halted for camp. How the great broad-wheeled, boat-bodied, gray-canvassed prairie-schooners thrilled Holly! They not only represented the forerunners of the western empire, but they seemed to be bridges across the plains to civilization. There were scores of these immense long-tongued wagons. Sturdy oxen were grazing away across the open; rolling mules were lifting the dust in many places; a hundred brace of horses had taken to the grass, while many were being unhitched. A dozen huge fires were burning. Red-shirted men stood out conspicuously among a horde of others, and all were busy as ants. The camp shone with color and hummed with activity. It was a scene of a kind which never palled on Holly.

  As Britt and Holly rode up to the first group, several men advanced to greet them. Holly recognized a sturdy, bearded freighter who boomed at Britt, and then the magnificent Buff Belmet, scout and plainsman, a friend of her father’s, and famous across the frontier. At the age of ten he had driven one of these great wagons. He had lost mother, father, brother and childish sweetheart on his first trip across the plains. At twenty he was a leader of caravans and a noted Indian fighter. And now at thirty he had the lined stern face, the piercing half-shut gray eye, the wonderful poise of the frontiersman to whom all had happened except death.

  The greetings were as between friends long separated.

  “An’ air you still single an’ fancy-free, Miss Holly?” queried the grizzled Jones.

  “At least, I’m still single,” replied Holly, with a laugh.

  “What’s the matter with these young ranchers an’ rangehands out hyar?”

  “Tom, it’s a case of too many to pick from,” drawled Britt. “How many wagons this trip? You shore come heeled.”

  “We left Las Animas with thirty-eight,” replied Belmet, “an’ we picked up twenty on the way. Jest as well, otherwise we might had more’n a brush with some Kiowas on the Dry Trail.”

  “I seen yore decorations,” replied Britt, pointing to the feathered arrows that stuck out in grim suggestiveness from the wagons. “Look there, Holly.”

  “I saw them long ago,” she replied, her eyes dilating.

  “How aboot my supplies, Buff?” inquired the foreman.

  “Six wagons, Cap. I’ll leave them hyar for your boys to unpack, an’ pick them up on my way back from Santa Fe.”

  “Fine. We shore need them. An’ Miss Holly has been frettin’ more aboot——”

  “Now, Cappy, don’t betray my vanity,” gayly interrupted Holly. “Even if all my pretty things did come I’ll never be vain again.”

  “Wal, Miss Holly, you don’t ’pear your usual bloomin’ self atall,” chimed in Jones.

  “No wonder, Tom. She had a scare oot on the range today. An’ believe me, I had one, too,” replied Britt, seriously.

  “Friends, I’ve had a scare for every one of these,” said Belmet, putting his finger to the white hairs over his temples.

  “Britt, this hyar New Mexico was gettin’ hot last year,” interposed Jones, wagging his head. “Buff will agree with me, I’ll bet. You’re in for hell.”

  “I’d rather not give Miss Holly another scare today,” rejoined the scout.

  “I’ll tell you aboot it,” said Britt. “You know, Buff, how things happen right oot of a clear sky. This would have been plumb bad but fer a queer deal.” Whereupon Britt briefly told the story without mentioning Frayne’s name.

  “Miss Holly, ain’t you ever goin’ to grow up?” queried Jones, reprovingly. “This range ain’t safe fer a girl no more.”

  “I fear I discovered that today.”

  Belmet shook his eagle head in grave portent. “It’s comin’, Cap, I told Colonel Ripple thet years ago. Too big an’ wild a range. Too many great herds of cattle. In Maxwell’s day beef was cheap. He couldn’t give it away. But this is a new era. The range offers easy pickin’ fer rustlers, an’ good markets. All the bad outfits will flock into New Mexico.”

  “I had thet figgered, an’ I’m goin’ to meet the situation with an ootfit of my own.”

  “Thet’s the Texas idee, Cap. You’ll give them a run for your beef.”

  “Buff, did you ever run into or heah of a fellar whose handle is Frayne—Renn Frayne?”

  “Frayne? I know him. Not likely to forget him, either. Cap, I was present in Abilene some years back when Frayne made your Texas gunman, Wess Hardin, take water.”

  “No!” ejaculated Britt, incredulously.

  “Hard to believe, an’ thet’s why it’s not generally known. But I saw it. Frayne bluffed Hardin. Dared him to draw. An’ would have killed him, too.”

  “Wal, I’ll be darned. Who is this Frayne, Buff?”

  “I don’t know who he is, but I can tell you what he is.”

  “Go ahaid. Miss Holly an’ me air shore interested. It was Frayne who did the shootin’ today.”

  “You don’t say? … I met Frayne first time after the war. Young fellar, footloose an’ wild, with a hand for guns. He was a cow-puncher. He became one of many hard-shootin’ hombres. I heerd of him often after thet, but never seen him again until thet time in Abilene. Then he was classed with the best of gunmen. An’ you know, you could count them on the fingers of one hand. Let’s see. That was three years ago. After thet he killed Strickland’s foreman, an’ went on the dodge.”

  “Crooked?”

  “No. It was the other way around, as I heerd. Strickland was a power in Kansas. An’ any one who bucked him had sheriff
s an’ jails to reckon with.”

  “Like Chisum?”

  “I wouldn’t class Chisum with Strickland, except as a hard driver of men.”

  “What was yore idee of Frayne?”

  “Wal, I reckon some different from thet of most of the youngsters I’ve met along the Old Trail. Most boys of good families didn’t last long. The Englishmen—an’ there was a sight of them—an’ still comin’—petered out pronto. They didn’t adapt themselves. They got snuffed out. But Frayne had the stern stuff of the Texas cowboy. He lasted. An’ I’m glad to hear he done you a service.”

  “Is Frayne an ootlaw?”

  “I reckon so, back in Kansas. An’ probably Nebraska, Wyomin’, Colorado. But I wouldn’t call him an outlaw here in New Mexico. ’Cause there ain’t any law yet.”

  “Wal, last summer we inaugerated what hawse-thieves an’ rustlers fear wuss than a gun—the rope,” declared Britt, forcibly.

  “Cap, has it occurred to you thet Frayne would be a whole outfit in himself, if you could hire him?” asked Belmet, thoughtfully. “I reckon you couldn’t, though. Anyway, Miss Holly wouldn’t have a bad hombre like Frayne around the ranch.”

  “Wouldn’t I?” rejoined Holly, hiding her nervous embarrassment. “I thought of it first and asked him.”

  “Good! You are wakin’ up to the needs of the range,” declared the scout. “It takes bad men to cope with bad men on this frontier.”

  “We’ve got him, Buff,” added Britt, with satisfaction. “An’ since I seen you last summer I’ve added Brazos Keene, Cherokee Jack, Tex an’ Max Southard, an’ two or three other tough nuts to our outfit. Now with Frayne it shore beats any bunch I ever heahed of. I’ll be obliged if you’ll spread thet news all along the Old Trail.”

  “You bet I will,” replied Belmet, emphatically. “I’ll lay it on thick, too…. Miss Holly, I shore feel sorry for you. But it’s the way to tide over this rustler wave.”

  “Britt, I know you was a Texas Ranger, an’ a Trail Boss, but can you handle an outfit like thet?” asked the bearded man with Jones.

  “It’ll be the job of my life, but I’ll do it.”

  “They’ll fight among themselves over Miss Holly,” declared Jones, quizzically.

  “Wal, thet’s up to her,” laughed Britt.

  “Gentlemen, it may amuse you, but it’s not funny to me,” interposed Holly. “But thank you for the advice—and come up for supper. We shall want to hear the news.”

  “Miss Holly!” expostulated Belmet, aghast. “It’s awful good of you…. Look at us ragamuffins!”

  “Come as you are, Belmet. At six o’clock sharp.”

  “Wal, be it upon your bonny head, Miss Holly…. I almost forgot to tell you. There’s a man with us who claims to know you. He’s in the Texas crowd. I didn’t get his name. We heerd about him from the women folks in thet train. They gossiped. Handsome rich southerner—suitor of yours when you was in school in Orleans—comin’ to visit you, an’ all thet sort of talk.”

  “I have no personal friends or acquaintances in the south,” replied Holly, dubiously.

  “Wal, accordin’ to the caravan gossip this gentleman was more’n a personal acquaintance,” went on Belmet. “I didn’t take much stock in it. But rememberin’ how you’re run after by so many adventurers, I reckoned I’d better tell you.”

  “Indeed yes. Thank you, Belmet…. Come to supper, surely. I must go now.”

  When Holly was half-way home Britt caught up with her. “Wal, lass, you look fagged. Rest a couple of hours, an’ throw off all thet’s troublin’ you.”

  “I wish I could. Today seems to be a cloud on the horizon.”

  “Wal, thet cloud will come an’ go…. I see some of the cowboys ridin’ in. An’ there’s our new man pokin’ along. Holly, I’m glad Belmet gave Frayne a better rep than he gave himself.”

  “I was glad, too. Still, it was bad enough.”

  “Holly, you’re right. An’ at thet Buff had no line on Frayne these last few years. I take it Frayne finally went to the bad. It always happens thet way. But mebbe nothin’ will come of it. The West is awful big an’ in these times you cain’t separate bad from good. We can afford to be charitable.”

  “Will you please ask Frayne to supper?”

  “I was aboot to give you a hint. Let’s impress him powerful fine fust thing…. Shall I set him next to you?”

  “By all means…. Britt, I’ve worried about Brazos.”

  “Wal, you’re wastin’ yore feelin’. Thet boy will be ridin’ in pronto.”

  “But Stinger is dead or wounded!”

  “So we heahed. In either case Brazos will fetch him in…. Now, Holly lass, leave it all to me. If I cain’t pick up Brazos with the glass I’ll send some of the cowboys after him…. You go sleep a while an’ forget this mess, an’ then make yoreself prettier than ever before.”

  “Cappy!—Why so unusually—pretty?” inquired Holly, curiously, with a smile.

  “Wal, thet Frayne was as cold as a daid fish,” declared the Texan, resentfully. “He looked at you once an’ didn’t see you atall. An’ thet was all he looked.”

  “Indeed, he was not flattering,” observed Holly, conscious of a quickening of tired pulse. “But he had just shot two of his own comrades.”

  “Nothin’ atall to Renn Frayne. I reckoned thet he was a Westerner who had no use fer wimmen. You run into one now an’ then. I don’t recollect you ever bein’ so sweet to any man. An’ the damned hombre not only never seen it but insulted you to boot. It riled me.”

  “Cappy, it will be good for us. You have spoiled me,” she rejoined, thoughtfully, and rode on in silence to the corrals.

  Rest and sleep and the image Holly saw in her mirror gave her back her poise, but did not eliminate from her mind the sombre sense of that day’s catastrophe.

  The great dining-room was exactly as it had been in Colonel Ripple’s day, when red men and white men of high and low degree met at his table. Don Carlos’ rich and lavish hand showed in the heavy dark furniture, in the polished stone floor with its worn rugs, in the huge carved stone fireplace, and the stained adobe walls with their old Spanish weapons, the painted frieze, and the huge rough-hewn rafter that centered the ceiling all its length.

  Holly’s guests arose at her entrance. Every seat had an occupant except the one of honor to her right.

  “Be seated, friends,” said Holly, in the words of her father’s custom. “Eat, drink and be merry.”

  Belmet occupied the seat next to the one which Holly had intended for Frayne. His absence affected her as had his affront out on the range, despite the fact that her reason made excuse for the mood of a man who had just shed his fellow-men’s blood. Conchita Velasquez and the Mexican women of Holly’s household sat upon her left. Britt faced her at the end of the long table, and the seats between were occupied by the invited guests and by others who took advantage of the standing Ripple hospitality. Among the rough-garbed, bearded freighters and teamsters a young man, conspicuous because of the difference of his attire, at once caught Holly’s eye. She recognized him, and acknowledged his elaborate bow. Embarrassment, and something of anger, accompanied her recognition. This fair man, whose sharp, cold, handsome features proclaimed him about thirty years old, and whose black frock-coat and gaudy waist-coat and long hair characterized him as a gambler of the period, was no other than Malcolm Lascelles, a Louisianian, whom Holly had met in New Orleans, during the concluding year of her school. It was a shock to see him at her table, recalling her girlish indiscretion.

  She had met him by accident, and then, resenting her loneliness and longing for freedom, for adventure, for love, she had been so foolish as to steal out to meet him again and again. Upon learning that Lascelles was a gambler and adventurer, she had regretted her folly and ended the acquaintance. Lascelles had persistently annoyed her with attempts to re-establish himself in her esteem, thereby getting her into disgrace with her teachers. For Holly this had its good side, for the principal wrote to her father, who hastened the advent of her departure for home. Holly had never heard from Lascelles and had almost forgotten the incident. But here he had turned up, at her own table, an older man with whom the years had played havoc, whose hungry eyes betrayed that he had been hunting for her, and intended to make her remember. Holly suffered a moment of dismay. She was to blame for this. Whatever had been in her mind—to imagine she had been in love with this Lascelles?