LOUISE found time dragging along like an impeding weight. Ranch life in the open places was not all that she had heard of it; the romance of range cattle, and the men who rode after them, drew away as one approached, and stood a dissolving mirage in the distance. She was ready to return to McPacken after a few days of it in Jim Kelly's notable mansion beside the Cherokee Trail.
Cattle raising was merely a business, she found, like any other, with the owner of the herd; cattle grazing a primitive trade to those who threw the ropes and handled the branding-irons. These latter were simple, ordinary men, no more noble, daring nor chivalrous as a class, than the jerries in Orrin Smith's gang. There was a certain careless independence about some of the younger ones, such as flares in youth everywhere and spurs it on to better its condition. Yet in most of them this spirit was not, and never had been.
Taking them as a class, cowhands were depressing associates, their lean vocabularies reduced by the restrictions of polite society when they came to Jim's, to such extent that they hadn't words enough left to express much of anything but yes and no.
Maud had grown away from this small mental confinement of the range. She said cow handling was a greatly overrated business; cowhands, like the brigands and pirates of romance, nothing but dirty, vulgar, swearing fellows elevattd by popular glamour to a 'nobility not their right. The guns they carried, said Maud, were responsible for that. Hang a gun on any common man and you make a hero of him. It hints of perils faced which he never meets, of combats fought which never take place in his narrow, monotonous life. There was not one cowhand in fifty, Maud declared, who could hit a horse with a pistol-shot at a hundred feet.
Jim hung around the ranch for a day or two, until he got his ears full of Maud's latest songs, then rode off on a tour of inspection of his various outfits afield. Cowhands came in from the nearer camps of an evening, sprightly bucks with brightly colored kerchiefs around their necks, dollar watches in their pockets dangling leather straps, combed and perfumed outrageously, and fairly clean above their necks.
Old Frank, who seemed to be a sort of adjutant, was around most of the time. He was likely to appear at any hour, lean his chair against the wall and sit tasting his unlighted cigarette, heels hooked over the chair rung, nothing at all to say. He appeared to have about the same status in Jinny's household as a chicken or a dog.
It was Maud who proposed going back to town. The notion seemed to hatch suddenly about noon on a certain day that was not distinguishable, except for this event, from the run of monotonous days that had gone before. Louise agreed. Within half an hour they were on their way, expecting to make it to McPacken by six or seven o'clock.
Maud explored the country as they drove, looking with keen and curious interest for trace of Laylander's cattle.
"The sheriff was to auction them off at noon today," Louise reminded her. "I suppose they're up at McPacken now."
"No, they don't drive 'em up to the court house steps and sell 'em, like you would a wagon and team. They're out on the range somewhere. I was just wonderin' what that darn fool did about it. Jim says he got 'em out of the Nation and went rangin' 'em off toward the river."
"I think maybe he was right about it, after all, Maud," Louise said, in the hard way of confession that a stubborn mind will yield when convinced at last. "It was about all a strictly honorable man could do."
"He's no more strictly honorable than anybody else," Maud declared. "Jim wouldn't steal cattle, but he certainly would grab his own away from somebody that was beatin' him out of them if he could. So would I; so would anybody with sense enough to crack an egg."
"I wonder what he intended to do after Withers bought the cattle in, and whether he's done it?" Louise speculated.
"What could he do?" Maud asked with bitter emphasis. "He threw down the strongest hand a man ever held, and I'm here to tell you there ain't anybody around here that would go the limit Jim went to help a man he never saw before. Everything was all set here for a get-away; it couldn't shape up that lucky way once in a thousand times."
"I saw it that way at the time, too, but I seem to get a different slant on it, as the railroad men say, the more I turn it over in my mind. It was all right for Jim to have his men run them over the line, just as Tom said. They didn't belong to him. I expect Tom would have done as much for a friend.
"Yes, he might; I don't say he wouldn't. But there's something wrong with a man that won't take his own away from a thief."
"He did, Maud. You know very well—"
"Oh, that was different."
"It was because he'd be going against the law, and not an individual who had wronged him, that Tom wouldn't drive the cattle on to Texas, Maud."
"That kind of reason, or religion, or whatever it is, passes away high over my head, kid," said Maud, with the unfeeling rudeness of the range that sometimes came into her manner and speech.
"Let it go," said Louise, dismissing Laylander, his troubles, mistakes and morals, with the words.
It was hot and wearisome riding in the uncovered buckboard, which pitched and twisted in bone-racking way over the little hummocks of bunch grass, wheeled traffic not being frequent enough over that road to wear them down. That was one disadvantage of a country that did not confine travellers to a marked and designated road. Every driver could choose his own road, shaping his course according to the judgment of his eye for smoothness.
This apparent smoothness of the prairie surface was most deceptive. A short distance away it seemed as if one could drive over it in comfort at a smart clip, that the roughness lay only a little way on every side. In that manner it seemed to lead the traveller on always, with the hope and expectation of coming into smooth country at last, yet never reaching it to his journey's end.'
Louise begged Maud to spare the horses, asking for pity where pity never had been bred. Maud laughed, in the unmerciful range way of disregarding the suffering of any creature that went on four legs, but when Louise complained that the terrific heat of the sun had given her an excruciating headache, which every twist and bump of the vehicle intensified, Maud slowed down.
Maud was sympathetic. She said she knew what a sun-pain on the prairie was; she used to get it when she rode the range. It would beat and sprangle in fiery prongs through the brain, threatening to blow the head to pieces, until the sun went down. Then it would ease away like heat going out of iron.
Louise said nothing about an ache of loneliness and regret that had been the forerunner of the other. But that ache had been growing in her conscience day by day since she flared up and burned with the wicked little flame of her unjust anger the silver cord that had bound her interests to Tom Laylander's. She was ashamed that she had urged him to do wrong, herself put up as the reward for his infidelity to his life's most sacred principles. Not much of a temptation, she reflected bitterly. Tom had done well to say farewell, and turn his back and ride away, his faith to his simple ideals unbroken.
"There's been cattle here within a day or two," said Maud, pointing to the ground with her whip, calling attention to the trampled tall grass in the broad river bottom, which they were crossing. "I guess here's where St. Thomas of Texas had his lovely little cows."
"They don't seem to he here now," said Louise, clinging desperately to the pitching buckboard as she looked around.
"Gee! it's nearly sundown, and us only comin' to the river," said Maud. "We'll have to crack it up a little, Louise, or we'll never get there. We're two miles above the crossin' now, I've dodged around so much to find soft places for you. How's your sun-pain?"
"Better, I think."
"Sure. It'll leave you as soon as the sun sets."
"There's a wagon over by the river," said Louise.
Maud pulled up, slowly, leaning back to take up the slack of the lines, looking sharply ahead.
"That's right. Looks like a chuck wagon. Withers sent it in, I suppose, to feed the crew that's goin' to take charge of that simple-minded kid's cows."
"Listen! Isn't that somebody yelling?"
"You've got good ears, kid," said Maud, looking at her curiously. "Has that pain struck—"
"There! don't you hear him? It's somebody in trouble, I tell you, Maud."
"It's the camp cook singin'. They generally sound like they're in deep trouble when they sing," Maud said.
"Drive over a little nearer, let's listen again," Louise suggested.
"What's the use goin' any further out of our way just to hear—"
"Please, Maud. We've got plenty of time."
"I don't want to go buttin' into one of old Withers's cow camps," said Maud. She drove toward the wagon, in spite of her undoubted reluctance, approaching it within two or three hundred yards, where she stopped.
"Nobody around," she said.
Cal Withers, spread out on the wagon wheel, was on the opposite side, his head hidden by the canvas top. He heard them, and raised his high, cowboy note, which much whooping throughout the afternoon had not dulled.
"Does sound like somebody in trouble," said Maud, still half doubtful, entirely suspicious. "But you never can tell."
Maud was not moved by any great compassion when she drove around the wagon and discovered the cowman in his undignified plight. A prank like this was accounted the rarest humor in the gentle relaxations of the range; Maud had been familiar with such jokes all her life. There was no point in a joke, in the humor of the old-time cowboy, that did not give the victim of it pain. The greater the suffering, the funnier the situation.
"It's Withers!" Louise whispered.
"It sure does favor him," said Maud, her grin spreading so big it seemed to push her ears back.
Withers had not been expecting women, and least of all women these two. It was just about the same to him in his extremity as if Tom Laylander had come back to taunt him in his agony of thirst and raging passion against the ropes that held him. He stood panting, lopping forward in exhaustion as far as the slack of the ropes would let him go, as miserable an object as pity ever looked upon.
Withers lifted his head after a few moments of shamed silence. It was evident that he was suffering more from his own rage than from the galling of the ropes. To sun and thirst he was hardened; he could have stood against them with any man that ever rode the range. But he was unused to humiliation, unaccustomed to having his rough-shod will bent for even a few hours from its way of going where it would.
Louise was moved by the cruelty practiced against him, unworthy of all compassion as she knew him to be. He appeared so entirely abject and ashamed, and still too proud to appeal to women to help him in his helplessness.
"I guess we'll drive on," said Maud.
She pulled up the slack of the dangling lines, turning a look full of appreciation for his comical fix on Colonel Withers.
"No, no!" Louise checked her. "I'm going to turn him loose."
"I don't believe we'd better butt in on anybody's joke," Maud advised.
"I wouldn't ask the favor of you, young lady," said Withers, directing his appeal to Louise, "if there was a chance of anybody else comin' along. I may have to hang here a week if you go by."
"We can tell somebody in town, they can come over," Maud said, speaking for the benefit of Louise, upon whom the old rascal's appeal was not lost.
"It would be a shame to leave him suffering here," Louise declared. She jumped out of the buckboard as she spoke, starting to Withers's relief.
"You'd better think it over a minute, kid," Maud counseled, with a shrewd intimation behind her words, a more knowing gleam in her humorous eyes. It was the fine point of the joke that passed over Louise.
"There ought to be a knife in that box at the end of the wagon," Withers suggested. "You could work faster with that."
The cook's butcher knife was there, a prodigious instrument with the shin-bone of an ox for a handle. Maud Kelly sat laughing until the buckboard shook while Louise sawed at the ropes with eager compassion and set the cowman free.
Withers broke for the water keg slung to the side of the wagon as the last rope fell from his leg, not stopping for even a glance of gratitude or thanks for his deliverer. When he had poured down several pints he scrambled under the wagon for his belt, then rummaged around with head under the canvas until he had found his gun.
"Thanks, awfully!" said Maud, with mocking sarcasm.
Withers was buckling on his cartridge belt with vicious haste, his eyes exploring the immediate vicinity for trace of his horse. Maud's taunt reminded himof his duty, which selfishness had pushed aside. Louise was putting the butcher knife back in the cook's kit. Withers turned to her, his eyes red, his thick gray hair tumbling down to his heavy, scowling brows.
"I'll remember this favor, young lady, and I hope I may be able to do as much for you some day," he said.
"Well, I hope not," said Louise, laughing a little at the thought of herself tied in that undignified fashion to a wagon wheel. "Who did it, Colonel Withers?"
"Crowd of fellers held me up and robbed me."
"Do you know who they were?"
"I could identify 'em," Withers replied, portentously.
Maud Kelly leaned back and laughed; a loud and strident laugh, the sound of it echoing among the willows at the river side. Louise looked at her reproachfully.
"It was a barbarous thing to do—tie a man that way and leave him to die!" Louise said. "I hope you catch the scoundrels that did it."
Maud hit a high note on the keyboard of her laughter there. It was almost a shriek of merriment. She rolled against the high-backed seat, drumming the buckboard with her hilarious heels.
Withers was beating the dust out of his trampled hat against the very wheel which had held him inglorious prisoner. He did not appear to hear Maud's unaccountable merriment.
"My horse seems to wandered off," Withers said, turning to Louise. "Could you give me a ride over to McPacken?"
"Not on your life!" said Maud, suddenly sober, exceedingly emphatic and severe. "Come on, kid. I guess you've done about all the damage you can do."
"Why not let him go with us, Maud? He could sit on the back."
"Come on here, I tell you, and shut up!" said Maud.
Louise was startled by the peremptory harshness of Maud's voice. She understood there was an old enmity between the houses of Kelly and Withers. She attributed Maud's hostility to that, and did not stand to make any further plea.
Withers did not press his appeal. As Louise took her place in the buckboard he turned away as if looking for his horse, his gratitude as short as his manner. At least it was not sufficient to impel him to lift his hand in any further expression of it, although Louise turned and looked back as if expecting it, wondering that he could let it pass so lightly.
"You've played hell now!" said Maud.
"Why, Maud! What have I done?"
"Who do you suppose put Withers on that wagon wheel, you poor little goose? Who was the rough wild feller that robbed the innocent colonel and fixed him so he couldn't follow?"
"Why, how should I know?" said Louise. "He could identify them, he said."
"I'll bet he could," said Maud, her face expressive of anything but mirth now.
She drove on, regardless of bumps, slashing pretty freely with her whip, the humor apparently gone out of the situation for her.
"I looked for him to sling his gun on me and take the team," Maud said, with something very close to a fearful look over her shoulder. "You darned little fool! standin' there pleadin' for that old robber after you'd cut him loose. You cuttin' him loose—of all the people on earth—you!"
"Well, why not? I don't see anything strange or funny about it."
"No, of course not. That's what made it so funny to me and dear old innocent Colonel Withers. What do you suppose Tom Laylander'll say when he hears of it?"
"Tom Laylander?"
"Yes, honey," said Maud, with provoking, scornful mockery. "He's the one that tied that innocent old gentleman up to the wagon wheel."
Light began to break and spread over Louise's understanding. Her heart sank, her spirits swooned, leaving her so suddenly weak that her words were little more than a whisper on her dry lips.
"Do you—do you—suppose it was, Maud?"
Maud gave her a withering, contemptuous look, lashed the horses and drove on.
"I guess that red-headed kid had more in him than I gave him credit for," Maud said, after a while. "Well, whatever his scheme was, you've certainly put a kink in it now!"