Jim Waring of Sonora-Town by Henry Herbert KnibbsOr, Tang of Life (page 4)

tell no one that he had been at the Starr Ranch.

“I don’t know where Jim Waring is,” said Starr, and, stepping back, he closed the door.

Ramon strode to his horse and mounted. All gringos were not like the Senor Jim. Many of them hated Mexicans. Ah, well, he would ride back to Stacey. The senora at the cantina was a pleasant woman. She would not shut the door in his face, for she knew who he was. He would ask for a room for the night. In the morning he would search for Senor Jim. He must find him.

Mrs. Adams answered his knock at the hotel door by coming down and letting him in. Ramon saw by the office clock that it was past three. She showed him to a room.

No, the senor had not been at the Starr Rancho. But he would find him.

Ramon tiptoed to the open window, and knelt with his arms on the sill. A falling star streaked the night.

“And I shall as soon find him as I would find that star,” he murmured. “Yet to-morrow there will be the sun. And I will ask the Holy Mother to help me. She will not refuse, knowing my heart.”

Without undressing, he flung himself on the bed. As he slept he dreamed; a strange, vivid dream of the setting sun and a tiny horseman limned against the gold. The horseman vanished as he rose to follow. If he were only sure that it was the Senor Jim! The dream had said that the senor had ridden into the west. In the morning–

With the dawn Ramon was up. Some one was moving about in the kitchen below. Ramon washed and smoothed his long black hair with his hands. He stepped quietly downstairs. Breakfast was not ready, so he walked to the kitchen and talked with Anita.

To her, who understood him as no gringo could, he told of his quest. She knew nothing of the Senor Jim’s whereabouts, save that he had come yesterday and talked with the senora. Anita admired the handsome young Mexican, whose face was so sad save when his quick smile lightened the shadow. And she told him to go back to the ranch and not become entangled in the affairs of the Americanos. It would be much better for him so.

Ramon listened patiently, but shook his head. The Senor Jim had been kind to him; had given him his life down in the Sonora desert. Was Ramon Ortego to forget that?

Mrs. Adams declined to take any money for Ramon’s room. He worked for her husband, and it was at Ramon’s own expense that he would make the journey in search for him. Instead she had Anita put up a lunch for Ramon.

He thanked her and rode away, taking the western trail across the morning desert.

Thirty miles beyond Stacey, he had news of Waring. A Mexican rancher had seen the gringo pass late in the evening. He rode a big buckskin horse. He was sure it must be the man Ramon sought. There was not another such horse in Arizona.

Ramon rode on next day, inquiring occasionally at a ranch or crossroad store. Once or twice he was told that such a horse and rider had passed many hours ago. At noon he rested and fed his pony. All that afternoon he rode west. Night found him in the village of Downey, where he made further inquiry, but without success.

Next morning he was on the road early, still riding west. No dream had come to guide him, yet the memory of the former dream was keen. If that dream were not true, all dreams were lies and prayer a useless ceremony.

For three days he rode, tracing the Senor Jim from town to town, but never catching up with him. Once he learned that Waring had slept in the same town, but had departed before daybreak. Ramon wondered why no dream had come to tell him of this.

That day he rode hard. There were few towns on his way. He reined in when he came to the fork where the southern highway branches from the Overland Road. The western road led on across the mountains past the great canon. The other swept south through cattle land and into the rough hills beyond which lay Phoenix and the old Apache Trail. He hailed a buck-board coming down the southern road. The driver had seen nothing of a buckskin horse. Ramon hesitated, closing his eyes. Suddenly in the darkness glared a golden sun, and against it the tiny, black silhouette of a horseman. His dream could not lie.

Day by day the oval of his face grew narrower, until his cheek-bones showed prominently. His lips lost their youthful fullness. Only his eyes were the same; great, velvet-soft black eyes, gently questioning, veiled by no subtlety, and brighter for the deepening black circles beneath them.

The fifth day found him patiently riding west, despite the fact that all trace of Waring had been lost. Questioned, men shook their heads and watched him ride away, his lithe figure upright, but his head bowed as though some blind fate drew him on while his spirit drowsed in stagnant hopelessness.

To all his inquiries that day he received the same answer. Finally, in the high country, he turned and retraced his way.

A week after he had left Stacey he was again at the fork of the highway. The southern road ran, winding, toward a shallow valley. He took this road, peering ahead for a ranch, or habitation of any kind. That afternoon he stopped at a wayside store and bought crackers and canned meat. He questioned the storekeeper. Yes, the storekeeper had seen such a man pass on a big buckskin cayuse several days ago. Ramon thanked him and rode on. He camped just off the road that evening. In the morning he set out again, cheered by a new hope. His dream had not lied; only there should have been another dream to show him the way before he had come to the fork in the road.

That afternoon three men passed him, riding hard. They were in their shirt-sleeves and were heavily armed. Their evident haste caused Ramon to note their passing with some interest. Yet they had thundered past him so fast, and in such a cloud of dust, that he could not see them clearly.

* * * * *

Waring, gaunt as a wolf, unshaven, his hat rimmed with white dust, pulled up in front of the weathered saloon in the town of Criswell on the edge of the desert.

He dismounted and stepped round the hitching-rail. His face was lined and gray. His eyes were red-rimmed and heavy. As he strode toward the saloon door, he staggered and caught himself. Dex shuffled uneasily, knowing that something was wrong with his master.

Waring drew his hand across his eyes, and, entering the saloon, asked for whiskey. As in a dream, he saw men sitting in the back of the place. They leaned on their elbows and talked. He drank and called for more. The loafers in the saloon glanced at each other. Three men had just ridden through town and down into the desert, going over-light for such a journey. And here was the fourth. They glanced at Waring’s boots, his belt, his strong shoulders, and his dusty sombrero. Whoever he was, he fitted his clothes. But a man “going in” was a fool to take more than one drink. The three men ahead had not stopped at the saloon. One of them had filled a canteen at the tank near the edge of the town. They had seemed in a great hurry for men of their kind.

Waring wiped his lips and turned. His eyes had grown bright. For an instant he glanced at the men, the brown walls spotted with “Police Gazette” pictures, the barred window at the rear of the room. He drew out his gun, spun the cylinder, and dropped it back into the holster.

The stranger, whoever he was, seemed to be handy with that kind of tool. Well, it was no affair of theirs. The desert had taken care of such affairs in the past, and there was plenty of room for more.

From the saloon doorway they saw Waring ride to the edge of town, dismount, and walk out in the desert in a wide circle. He returned to his horse, and, mounting, rode at right angles to the course the three riders had taken.

One of the men in the doorway spoke. “Thought so,” he said with finality.

The others nodded. It was not their affair. The desert would take care of that.

About the middle of the afternoon, Waring rode down a sandy draw that deepened to an arroyo. Near the mouth of the arroyo, where it broke off abruptly to the desert level, he reined up. His horse stood with head lowered, his gaunt sides heaving. Waring patted him.

“Not much longer, old boy,” he said affectionately.

With his last burst of strength, the big buckskin had circled the course taken by the three men, urged by Waring’s spur and voice. They were heading in a direct line across the level just beyond the end of the arroyo where Waring was concealed. He could not see them, but as usual he watched Dex’s ears. The horse would be aware of their nearness without seeing them. And Waring dared not risk the chance of discovery. They must have learned that he was following them, for they had ridden hard these past few days. Evidently they had been unwilling to chance a fight in any of the towns. And, in fact, Waring had once been ahead of them, knowing that they would make for the desert. But that night he had overslept, and they had passed him in the early hours of morning.

Slowly Dex raised his head and sniffed. Waring patted him, afraid that he would nicker. He had dismounted to tighten the cinches when he thought he heard voices in argument. He mounted again. The men must have ridden hard to have made such good time. Again he heard voices. The men were near the mouth of the arroyo. Waring tossed his hat to the ground and dropped his gauntlets beside his hat. Carefully he wiped his sweating hands on his bandanna. Dex threw up his head. His nostrils worked. Waring spoke to him.

A shadow touched the sand at the mouth of the arroyo. Waring leaned forward and drove in the spurs. The big buckskin leaped to a run as he rounded the shoulder of the arroyo.

The three horsemen, who had been riding close together, spread out on the instant. Waring threw a shot at the foremost figure even as High Chin’s first shot tore away the front of his shirt. Waring fired again. Tony Brewster, on the ground, emptied his gun as Waring spurred over him. Turning in the saddle as he flashed past High Chin, Waring fired at close range at the other’s belt buckle. Out on the levels, Andy Brewster’s horse was running with tail tucked down. Waring threw his remaining shot at High Chin, and, spurring Dex, stood in his stirrups as he reloaded his gun.

The rider ahead was rocking in the saddle. He had been hit, although Waring could not recall having shot at him. Suddenly the horse went down, and Andy Brewster pitched to the sand. Waring laughed and reined round on the run, expecting each instant to feel the blunt shock of a bullet. High Chin was still sitting his horse, his gun held muzzle up. Evidently he was not hard hit, or, if he were, he was holding himself for a final shot at Waring. Behind him, almost beneath his horse, his brother Tony had raised himself on his elbow and was fumbling with his empty gun.

Waring rode slowly toward High Chin. High Chin’s hand jerked down. Waring’s wrist moved in answer. The two reports blended in a blunt, echoless roar. Waring felt a shock that numbed his thigh. High Chin sat stiffly in the saddle, his hand clasping the horn. He turned and gazed down at his brother.

“Thought you got him,” said Tony Brewster from the ground. “Sit still and I’ll get him from under your horse.”

Waring knew now that High Chin was hit hard. The foreman had let his gun slip from his fingers. Waring saw a slight movement just beneath High Chin’s horse. A shock lifted him from the saddle, and he dropped to the ground as Tony Brewster fired. But there was no such thing as quit just so long as Waring could see to shoot. Dragging himself to his gun, he shook the sand from its muzzle. He knew that he could not last long. Already flecks of fire danced before his eyes. He bit his lip as he raised himself and drew fine on that black figure beneath High Chin’s horse. The gun jumped in his hand. Waring saw the black figure twitch and roll over. Then his sight grew clouded. He tried to brush away the blur that grew and spread. For an instant his eyes cleared. High Chin still sat upright in the saddle. Waring raised his gun and fired quickly. As his hand dropped to the sand, High Chin pitched headlong and lay still.

Then came a soft black veil that hid the glimmering sun and the wide desert reaches.

High Chin, his legs paralyzed by a slug that had torn through his abdomen and lodged in his spine, knew that he had made his last fight. He braced himself on his hands and called to his brother Tony. But his brother did not answer. High Chin’s horse had strayed, and was grazing up the arroyo. The stricken man writhed round, feeling no pain, but conscious of a horrible numbness across his back and abdomen.

“When it hits my heart I’m done,” he muttered. “Guess I’ll go over and keep Tony company.”

Inch by inch he dragged himself across the sand. Tony Brewster lay on his back. High Chin touched him; felt of the limp arm, and gazed curiously at the blue-edged hole in his brother’s chest. With awful labor that brought a clammy moisture to his face, he managed to drag himself close to his brother and writhe round to a position where he could sit up, braced against the other’s body. He gazed out across the desert. It had been a fast fight. Waring was done for. High Chin wondered how long he would last. The sun was near the horizon. It seemed only a few minutes ago that the sun had been directly overhead and he and his brothers had been cursing the heat. It was growing cold. He shivered. A long shadow reached out toward him from the bank of the arroyo. In a few minutes it would touch him. Then would come night and the stars. The numbness was creeping toward his chest. He could not breathe freely. He moved his arms. _They_ were alive yet. He opened and closed his fingers, gazing at them curiously. It was a strange thing that a man should die like this; a little at a time, and not suffer much pain. The fading flame of his old recklessness flared up.

“I’m goin’ across,” he said. “But, by God, I’m takin’ Jim Waring with me!”

He glanced toward the buckskin horse that stood so patiently beside that silent figure out there. Waring was done for. High Chin blinked. A long shaft of sunlight spread across the sand, and in the glow High Chin saw that the horse was moving toward him. He stared for a few seconds. Then he screamed horribly.

Waring, his hand gripping the stirrup, was dragging across the sand beside the horse that stepped sideways and carefully as Waring urged him on. Dex worked nearer to High Chin, but so slowly that High Chin thought it was some horrible phantasy sent to awaken fear in his dulled brain. But that dragging figure, white-faced and terrible–that was real! Within a few paces of High Chin, Dex stopped and turned his head to look down at Waring. And Waring, swaying up on his hands, laughed wildly.

“I came over–to tell you–that it was Pat’s gun–” He collapsed and lay still.

High Chin sat staring dully at the gunman’s uncovered head. The horse sniffed at Waring. High Chin’s jaw sagged. He slumped down, and lay back across the body of his brother.

* * * * *

A pathway of lamplight floated out and across the main street of Criswell. A solitary figure lounged at the saloon bar. The sharp barking of a dog broke the desert silence. The lounger gazed at the path of lamplight which framed the bare hitching-rail. His companions of the afternoon had departed to their homes. Again the dog barked shrilly. The saloon-keeper moved to a chair and picked up a rumpled paper.

The lounger, leaning on his elbow, suddenly straightened. He pointed toward the doorway. The saloon-keeper saw the motion from the corner of his eye. He lowered his paper and rose. In the soft radiance a riderless horse stood at the hitching-rail, his big eyes glowing, his ears pricked forward. Across the horse’s shoulder was a ragged tear, black against the tawny gold of his coat. The men glanced at each other. It was the horse of the fourth man; the man who had staggered in that afternoon, asked for whiskey, and who had left as buoyantly as though he went to meet a friend.

“They got him,” said the saloon-keeper.

“They got him,” echoed the other.

Together they moved to the doorway and peered out. The man who had first seen the horse stepped down and tied the reins to the rail. He ran his hand down the horse’s shoulder over muscles that quivered as he examined the wound. He glanced at the saddle, the coiled rope, the slackened cinches, and pointed to a black stain on the stirrup leather.

[Illustration: I came over–to tell you–that it was Pat’s gun]

“From the south,” he said. “Maguey rope, and that saddle was made in Mexico.”

“Mebby he wants water,” suggested the saloon-keeper.

“He’s had it. Reins are wet where he drug ’em in the tank.”

“Wonder who them three fellas was?”

“Don’ know. From up north, by their rig. I’m wonderin’ who the fourth fella was–and where he is.”

“Why, he’s out there, stiff’nin’ on the sand. They’s been a fight. And, believe me, if the others was like him–she was a dandy!”

“I guess it’s up to us to do somethin’,” suggested the lounger.

“Not to-night, Bill. You don’t ketch me ridin’ into a flash in the dark before I got time to tell myself I’m a dam’ fool. In the mornin’, mebby–“

Their heads came up as they heard a horse pounding down the road. A lean pony, black with sweat, jumped to a trembling stop.

A young Mexican swung down and walked stiffly up to Dex.

“Where is Senor Jim?” he queried, breathing hard.

“Don’ know, hombre. This his hoss?”

“Si! It is Dex.”

‘Well, the hoss came in, recent, draggin’ the reins.”

“Then you have seen him?”

“Seen who? Who are you, anyway?”

“Me, I am Ramon Ortego, of Sonora. The Senor Jim is my friend. I would find him.”

“Well, if your friend sports a black Stetson and a dam’ bad eye and performs with a short-barreled .45, he rode in this afternoon just about a hour behind three other fellas. They lit out into the dry spot. Reckon you’ll find your friend out there, if the coyotes ain’t got to him.”

Ramon limped to the rail and untied Dex. Then he mounted his own horse.

“Dex,” he said softly, riding alongside, “where is the Senor Jim?”

The big buckskin swung his head round and sniffed Ramon’s hand. Then he plodded down the street toward the desert. At the tank Ramon let his horse drink. Dex, like a great dog, sniffed the back trail on which he had come, plodding through the night toward the spot where he knew his master to be.

Ramon, burdened with dread and weariness, rode with his hands clasped round the saddle-horn. The Senor Jim, his Senor Jim, had found those whom he sought. He had not come back. Ramon was glad that he had filled the canteen. If the man who had killed his Senor Jim had escaped, he would follow him even as he had followed Waring. And he would find him. “And then I shall kill him,” said Ramon simply. “He does not know my face. As I speak to him the Senor Jim’s name I shall kill him, and the Senor Jim will know then that I have been faithful.”

The big buckskin plodded on across the sand, the empty stirrups swinging. Ramon’s gaze lifted to the stars. He smiled wanly.

“I follow him. Wherever he has gone, I follow him, and he will not lose the way.”

His bowed head, nodding to the pace of the pony, seemed to reiterate in grotesque assertion his spoken word. Ramon’s tired body tingled as Dex strode faster. The horse nickered, and an answering nicker came from the night. His own tired pony struck into a trot. Dex stopped. Ramon slid down, and, stumbling forward, he touched a black bulk that lay on the sand.

Waring, despite his trim build, was a heavy man. Ramon was just able to lift him and lay him across the saddle. A coyote yipped from the brush of the arroyo. As Ramon started back toward town his horse shied at something near the arroyo’s entrance. Ramon did not know that the bodies of Tony and Bob Brewster formed that low mound half-hidden by the darkness.

A yellow star, close to the eastern horizon, twinkled faintly and then disappeared. The saloon at Criswell had been closed for the night.

Next morning the marshal of Criswell sent a messenger to the telegraph office at the junction. There was no railroad entering the Criswell Valley. The messenger bore three telegraph messages; one to Sheriff Hardy, one to Bud Shoop, and one to Mrs. Adams.

Ramon, outside Waring’s room in the marshal’s house, listened as the local doctor moved about. Presently he heard the doctor ask a question. Waring’s voice answered faintly. Ramon stepped from the door and found his way to the stable. Dex, placidly munching alfalfa, turned his head as Ramon came in.

“The Senor Jim is not dead,” he told the horse.

And, leaning against Dex, he wept softly, as women weep, with a happiness too great to bear. The big horse nuzzled his shoulder with his velvet-smooth nose, as though he would sympathize. Then he turned to munching alfalfa again in huge content. He had had a weary journey. And though his master had not come to feed him, here was the gentle, low-voiced Ramon, whom he knew as a friend.

CHAPTER XX

_City Folks_

Bud Shoop’s new duties kept him exceedingly busy. As the days went by he found himself more and more tied to office detail. Fortunately Torrance had left a well-organized corps of rangers, each with his own special work mapped out, work that Shoop understood, with the exception of seeding and planting experiments, which Lundy, the expert, attended to as though the reserve were his own and his life depended upon successful results along his special line.

Shoop had long since given up trying to dictate letters. Instead he wrote what he wished to say on slips of paper which his clerk cast into conventional form. The genial Bud’s written directions were brief and to the point.

Among the many letters received was one from a writer of Western stories, applying for a lease upon which to build a summer camp. His daughter’s health was none too good, and he wanted to be in the mountains. Shoop studied the letter. He had a vague recollection of having heard of the writer. The request was legitimate. There was no reason for not granting it.

Shoop called in his stenographer. “Ever read any of that fella’s books?”

“Who? Bronson? Yes. He writes bang-up Western stories.”

“He does, eh? Well, you get hold of one of them stories. I want to read it. I’ve lived in the West a few minutes myself.”

A week later Shoop had made his decision. He returned a shiny, new volume to the clerk.

“I never took to writin’ folks reg’lar,” he told the clerk. “Mebby I got the wrong idee of ’em. Now I reckon some of them is human, same as you and me. Why, do you know I been through lots of them things he writes about. And, by gollies, when I read that there gun-fight down in Texas, I ketched myself feelin’ along my hip, like I was packin’ a gun. And when I read about that cowboy’s hoss,–the one with the sarko eye and the white legs,–why, I ketched myself feelin’ for my ole bandanna to blow my nose. An’ I seen dead hosses a-plenty. But you needn’t to say nothin’ about that in the letter. Just tell him to mosey over and we’ll talk it out. If a man what knows hosses and folks like he does wa’n’t raised in the West, he ought to been. Heard anything from Adams?”

“He was in last week. He’s up on Baldy. Packed some stuff up to the lookout.”

“Uh-uh. Now, the land next to my shack on the Blue ain’t a bad place for this here writer. I got the plat, and we can line out the five acres this fella wants from my corner post. But he’s comin’ in kind of late to build a camp.”

“It will be good weather till December,” said the clerk.

“Well, you write and tell him to come over. Seen anything of Hardy and his men lately?”

“Not since last Tuesday.”

“Uh-uh. They’re millin’ around like a lot of burros–and gettin’ nowhere. But Jim Waring’s out after that bunch that got Pat. If I wasn’t so hefty, I’d ‘a’ gone with him. I tell you the man that got Pat ain’t goin’ to live long to brag on it.”

“They say it was the Brewster boys,” ventured the stenographer.

“They say lots of things, son. But Jim Waring _knows_. God help the man that shot Pat when Jim Waring meets up with him. And I want to tell you somethin’. Be kind of careful about repeatin’ what ‘they say’ to anybody. You got nothin’ to back you up if somebody calls your hand. ‘They’ ain’t goin’ to see you through. And you named the Brewster boys. Now, just suppose one of the Brewster boys heard of it and come over askin’ you what you meant? I bet you a new hat Jim Waring ain’t said Brewster’s name to a soul–and he _knows_. I’m goin’ over to Stacey. Any mail the stage didn’t get?”

“Letter for Mrs. Adams.”

“Uh-uh. Lorry writes to his ma like he was her beau–reg’lar and plenty. Funny thing, you can’t get a word out of him about wimmin-folk, neither. He ain’t that kind of a colt. But I reckon when he sees the gal he wants he’ll saddle up and ride out and take her.” And Bud chuckled.

Bondsman rapped the floor with his tail. Bondsman never failed to express a sympathetic mood when his master chuckled.

“Now, look at that,” said Shoop, grinning. “He knows I’m goin’ over to Stacey. He heard me say it. And he says I got to take him along, ’cause he knows I ain’t goin’ on a hoss. That there dog bosses me around somethin’ scandalous.”

The stenographer smiled as Shoop waddled from the office with Bondsman at his heels. There was something humorous, almost pathetic, in the gaunt and grizzled Airedale’s affection for his rotund master. And Shoop’s broad back, with the shoulders stooped slightly and the set stride as he plodded here and there, often made the clerk smile. Yet there was nothing humorous about Shoop’s face when he flashed to anger or studied some one who tried to mask a lie, or when he reprimanded his clerk for naming folk that it was hazardous to name.

The typewriter clicked; a fly buzzed on the screen door; a beam of sunlight flickered through the window. The letter ran:–

Yours of the 4th inst. received and contents noted. In answer would state that Supervisor Shoop would be glad to have you call at your earliest convenience in regard to leasing a camp-site on the White Mountain Reserve.

Essentially a business letter of the correspondence-school type.

But the stenographer was not thinking of style. He was wondering what the girl would be like. There was to be a girl. The writer had said that he wished to build a camp to which he could bring his daughter, who was not strong. The clerk thought that a writer’s daughter might be an interesting sort of person. Possibly she was like some of the heroines in the writer’s stories. It would be interesting to meet her. He had written a poem once himself. It was about spring, and had been published in the local paper. He wondered if the writer’s daughter liked poetry.

In the meantime, Lorry, with two pack-animals and Gray Leg, rode the hills and canons, attending to the many duties of a ranger.

And as he caught his stride in the work he began to feel that he was his own man. Miles from headquarters, he was often called upon to make a quick decision that required instant and individual judgment. He made mistakes, but never failed to report such mistakes to Shoop. Lorry preferred to give his own version of an affair that he had mishandled rather than to have to explain some other version later. He was no epitome of perfection. He was inclined to be arbitrary when he knew he was in the right. Argument irritated him. He considered his “Yes” or “No” sufficient, without explanation.

He made Shoop’s cabin his headquarters, and spent his spare time cording wood. He liked his occupation, and felt rather independent with the comfortable cabin, a good supply of food, a corral and pasture for the ponies, plenty of clear, cold water, and a hundred trails to ride each day from dawn to dark as he should choose. Once unfamiliar with the timber country, he grew to love the twinkling gold of the aspens, the twilight vistas of the spruce and pines, and the mighty sweep of the great purple tides of forest that rolled down from the ranges into a sheer of space that had no boundary save the sky.

He grew a trifle thinner in the high country. The desert tan of his cheeks and throat deepened to a ruddy bronze.

Aside from pride in his work, he took special pride in his equipment, keeping his bits and conchas polished and his leather gear oiled. Reluctantly he discarded his chaps. He found that they hindered him when working on foot. Only when he rode into Jason for supplies did he wear his chaps, a bit of cowboy vanity quite pardonable in his years.

If he ever thought of women at all, it was when he lounged and smoked by the evening fire in the cabin, sometimes recalling “that Eastern girl with the jim-dandy mother.” He wondered if they ever thought of him, and he wished that they might know he was now a full-fledged ranger with man-size responsibilities. “And mebby they think I’m ridin’ south yet,” he would say to himself. “I must have looked like I didn’t aim to pull up this side of Texas, from the way I lit out.” But, then, women didn’t understand such things.

Occasionally he confided something of the kind to the spluttering fire, laughing as he recalled the leg of lamb with which he had waved his hasty farewell.

“And I was scared, all right. But I wasn’t so scared I forgot I’d get hungry.” Which conclusion seemed to satisfy him.

When he learned that a writer had leased five acres next to Bud’s cabin, he was skeptical as to how he would get along with “strangers.” He liked elbow-room. Yet, on second thought, it would make no difference to him. He would not be at the cabin often nor long at a time. The evenings were lonely sometimes.

But when camped at the edge of the timber on some mountain meadow, with his ponies grazing in the starlit dusk, when the little, leaping flame of his night fire flung ruddy shadows that danced in giant mimicry in the cavernous arches of the pines; when the faint tinkle of the belled pack-horse rang a faery cadence in the distance; then there was no such thing as loneliness in his big, outdoor world. Rather, he was content in a solid way. An inner glow of satisfaction because of work well done, a sense of well-being, founded upon perfect physical health and ease, kept him from feeling the need of companionship other than that of his horses. Sometimes he sat late into the night watching the pine gum ooze from a burning log and swell to golden bubbles that puffed into tiny flames and vanished in smoky whisperings. At such times a companion would not have been unwelcome, yet he was content to be alone.

Later, when Lorry heard that the writer was to bring his daughter into the high country, he expressed himself to Shoop’s stenographer briefly: “Oh, hell!” Yet the expletive was not offensive, spoken gently and merely emphasizing Lorry’s attitude toward things feminine.

While Lorry was away with the pack-horses and a week’s riding ahead of him, the writer arrived in Jason, introduced himself and his daughter,–a rather slender girl of perhaps sixteen or eighteen,–and later, accompanied by the genial Bud, rode up to the Blue Mesa and inspected the proposed camp-site. As they rode, Bud discoursed upon the climate, ways of building a log cabin, wild turkeys, cattle, sheep, grazing, fuel, and water, and concluded his discourse with a dissertation upon dogs in general and Airedales in particular. The writer was fond of dogs and knew something about Airedales. This appealed to Shoop even more than had the writer’s story of the West.

Arrived at the mesa, tentative lines were run and corners marked. The next day two Mormon youths from Jason started out with a load of lumber and hardware. The evening of the second day following they arrived at the homestead, pitched a tent, and set to work. That night they unloaded the lumber. Next morning they cleared a space for the cabin. By the end of August the camp was finished. The Mormon boys, to whom freighting over the rugged hills was more of a pastime than real work, brought in a few pieces of furniture–iron beds, a stove, cooking-utensils, and the hardware and provisions incidental to the maintenance of a home in the wilderness.

The writer and his daughter rode up from Jason with the final load of supplies. Excitement and fatigue had so overtaxed the girl’s slender store of strength that she had to stay in bed for several days. Meanwhile, her father put things in order. The two saddle-horses, purchased under the critical eye of Bud Shoop, showed an inclination to stray back to Jason, so the writer turned them into Lorry’s corral each evening, as his own lease was not entirely fenced.

Riding in from his long journey one night, Lorry passed close to the new cabin. It loomed strangely raw and white in the moonlight. He had forgotten that there was to be a camp near his. The surprise rather irritated him. Heretofore he had considered the Blue Mesa was his by a kind of natural right. He wondered how he would like the city folks. They had evidently made themselves at home. Their horses were in his corral.

As he unsaddled Gray Leg, a light flared up in the strange camp. The door opened, and a man came toward him.

“Good-evening,” said the writer. “I hope my horses are not in your way.”

“Sure not,” said Lorry as he loosened a pack-rope.

He took off the packs and lugged them to the veranda. The tired horses rolled, shook themselves, and meandered toward the spring.

“I’m Bronson. My daughter is with me. We are up here for the summer.”

“My name is Adams,” said Lorry, shaking hands.

“The ranger up here. Yes. Well, I’m glad to meet you, Adams. My daughter and I get along wonderfully, but it will be rather nice to have a neighbor. I heard you ride by, and wanted to explain about my horses.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Bronson. Just help yourself.”

“Thank you. Dorothy–my daughter–has been under the weather for a few days. She’ll be up to-morrow, I think. She has been worrying about our using your corral. I told her you would not mind.”

“Sure not. She’s sick, did you say?”

“Well, over-tired. She is not very strong.”

“Lungs?” queried Lorry, and immediately he could have kicked himself for saying it.

“I’m afraid so, Adams. I thought this high country might do her good.”

“It’s right high for some. Folks got to take it easy at first; ‘specially wimmin-folk. I’m right sorry your girl ain’t well.”

“Thank you. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. She is really curious to know how you live, what you do, and, in fact, what a real live ranger looks like. Mr. Shoop told her something about you while we were in Jason. They became great friends while the camp was building. She says she knows all about you, and tries to tease me by keeping it to herself.”

“Bud–my boss–is some josher,” was all that Lorry could think of to say at the time.

Bronson went back to his cabin. Lorry, entering his camp, lighted the lamp and built a fire. The camp looked cozy and cheerful after a week on the trail.

When he had eaten he sat down to write to his mother. He would tell her all about the new cabin and the city folks. But before he had written more than to express himself “that it was too darned bad a girl had to stay up in the woods without no other wimmin-folks around,” he became drowsy. The letter remained unfinished. He would finish it to-morrow. He would smoke awhile and then go to bed.

A healthy young animal himself, he could not understand what sickness meant. And as for lungs–he had forgotten there were such things in a person’s make-up. And sick folks couldn’t eat “regular grub.” It must be pretty tough not to be able to eat heartily. Now, there was that wild turkey he had shot near the Big Spring. He tiptoed to the door. The lights were out in the other cabin. It was closed season for turkey, but then a fellow needed a change from bacon and beans once in a while.

He had hidden the turkey in a gunny-sack which hung from a kitchen rafter. Should he leave it in the sack, hang it from a rafter of their veranda, out of reach of a chance bobcat or coyote, or–it would be much more of a real surprise to hang the big bird in front of their door in all his feathered glory. The sack would spoil the effect.

He took off his boots and walked cautiously to the other cabin. The first person to come out of that cabin next morning would actually bump into the turkey. It would be a good joke.

“And if he’s the right kind of a hombre he won’t talk about it,” thought Lorry as he returned to his camp. “And if he ain’t, I am out one fine bird, and I’ll know to watch out for him.”

Chapter XXI

_A Slim Whip of a Girl_

When Bronson opened his door to the thin sunlight and the crisp chill of the morning, he chuckled. He had made too many camps in the outlands to be surprised by an unexpected gift of game out of season. His neighbor was a ranger, and all rangers were incidentally game wardens. Bronson believed heartily in the conservation of game, and in this instance he did not intend to let that turkey spoil.

He called to his daughter.

Her brown eyes grew big. “Why, it’s a turkey!”

Bronson laughed. “And to-day is Sunday. We’ll have a housewarming and invite the ranger to dinner.”

“Did he give it to you? Isn’t it beautiful! What big wings–and the breast feathers are like little bronze flames! Do wild turkeys really fly?”

“Well, rather. It’s a fine sight to see them run to a rim rock and float off across a canon.”

“Did you tell him about our horses? Is he nice? What did he say? But I could never imagine a turkey like that flying. I always think of turkeys as strutting around a farmyard with their heads held back and all puffed out in front. This one is heavy! I can’t see how he could even begin to fly.”

“They have to get a running start. Then they usually flop along and sail up into a tree. Once they are in a tree, they can float off into space easily. They seem to fly slowly, but they can disappear fast enough. The ranger seems to be a nice chap.”

“Did he really give the turkey to us?”

“It was hanging right here when I came out. I can’t say that he gave it to us. You see, it is closed season for turkey.”

“But we must thank him.”

“We will. Let’s ask him to dinner. He seems to be a pleasant chap; quite natural. He said we were welcome to keep our horses in his corral. But if you want to have him for a real friendly neighbor, Dorothy, don’t mention the word ‘turkey.’ We’ll just roast it, make biscuits and gravy, and ask him to dinner. He will understand.”

“Then I am going to keep the wings and tail to put on the wall of my room. How funny, not to thank a person for such a present.”

“The supervisor would reprimand him for killing game out of season, if he heard about it.”

“But just one turkey?”

“That isn’t the idea. If it came to Mr. Shoop that one of his men was breaking the game laws, Mr. Shoop would have to take notice of it. Not that Shoop would care about one of his men killing a turkey to eat, but it would hurt the prestige of the Service. The natives would take advantage of it and help themselves to game.”

“Of course, you know all about those matters. But can’t I even say ‘turkey’ when I ask him to have some?”

“Oh,” laughed Bronson, “call it chicken. He’ll eat just as heartily.”

“The ranger is up,” said Dorothy. “I can hear him whistling.”

“Then let’s have breakfast and get this big fellow ready to roast. It will take some time.”

An hour later, Lorry, fresh-faced and smiling, knocked on the lintel of their open doorway.

Bronson, in his shirt-sleeves and wearing a diminutive apron to which clung a fluff of turkey feathers, came from the kitchen.

“Good-morning. You’ll excuse my daughter. She is busy.”

“I just came over to ask how she was.”

“Thank you. She is much better. We want you to have dinner with us.”

“Thanks. But I got some beans going–“

“But this is chicken, man! And it is Sunday.”

Lorry’s gray eyes twinkled. “Chickens are right scarce up here. And chicken sure tastes better on Sunday. Was you goin’ to turn your stock out with mine?”

“That’s so!”

They turned Bronson’s horses out, and watched them charge down the mesa toward the three animals grazing lazily in the morning sunshine.

“Your horses will stick with mine,” said Lorry. “They won’t stray now.”

“Did I hear a piano this morning, or did I dream that I heard some one playing?”

“Oh, it was me, foolin’ with Bud’s piano in there. Bud’s got an amazin’ music-box. Ever see it?”

“No. I haven’t been in your cabin.”

“Well, come right along over. This was Bud’s camp when he was homesteadin’. Ever see a piano like that?”

Bronson gazed at the carved and battered piano, stepping close to it to inspect the various brands. “It is rather amazing. I didn’t know Mr. Shoop was fond of music.”

“Well, he can’t play reg’lar. But he sure likes to try. You ought to hear him and Bondsman workin’ out that ‘Annie Laurie’ duet. First off, you feel like laughin’. But Bud gets so darned serious you kind of forget he ain’t a professional. ‘Annie Laurie’ ain’t no dance tune–and when Bud and the dog get at it, it is right mournful.”

“I have seen a few queer things,”–and Bronson laughed,–“but this beats them all.”

“You’d be steppin’ square on Bud’s soul if you was to josh him about that piano,” said Lorry.

“I wouldn’t. But thank you just the same. You have a neat place here, Adams.”

“When you say ‘neat’ you say it all.”

“I detest a fussy camp. One gets enough of that sort of thing in town. Is that a Gallup saddle or a Frazier?”

“Frazier.”

“I used a Heiser when I was in Mexico. They’re all good.”

“That’s what I say. But there’s a hundred cranks to every make of saddle and every rig. You said you were in Mexico?”

“Before I was married. As a young man I worked for some of the mines. I went there from college.”

“I reckon you’ve rambled some.” And a new interest lightened Lorry’s eyes. Perhaps this man wasn’t a “plumb tenderfoot,” after all.

“Oh, not so much. I punched cattle down on the Hassayampa and in the Mogollons. Then I drifted up to Alaska. But I always came back to Arizona. New Mexico is mighty interesting, and so is Colorado. California is really the most wonderful State of all, but somehow I can’t keep away from Arizona.”

“Shake! I never been out of Arizona, except when I was a kid, but she’s the State for me.”

A shadow flickered in the doorway. Lorry turned to gaze at a delicate slip of a girl, whose big brown eyes expressed both humor and trepidation.

“My daughter Dorothy, Mr. Adams. This is our neighbor, Dorothy.”

“I’m right glad to meet you, miss.”

And Lorry’s strong fingers closed on her slender hand. To his robust sense of the physical she appealed as something exceedingly fragile and beautiful, with her delicate, clear coloring and her softly glowing eyes. What a little hand! And what a slender arm! And yet Lorry thought her arm pretty in its rounded slenderness. He smiled as he saw a turkey feather fluttering on her shoulder.

“Looks like that chicken was gettin’ the best of you,” he said, smiling.

“That’s just it,” she agreed, nothing abashed. “Father, you’ll have to help.”

“You’ll excuse us, won’t you? We’ll finish our visit at dinner.”

Lorry had reports to make out. He dragged a chair to the table. That man Bronson was all right. Let’s see–the thirtieth–looked stockier in daylight. Had a good grip, too, and a clear, level eye. One mattock missing in the lookout cabin–and the girl; such a slender whip of a girl! Just like a young willow, but not a bit like an invalid. Buckley reports that his man will have the sheep across the reservation by the fourth of the month. Her father had said she was not over-strong. And her eyes! Lorry had seen little fawns with eyes like that–big, questioning eyes, startled rather than afraid.

“Reckon everything she sees up here is just amazin’ her at every jump. I’ll bet she’s happy, even if she _has_ got lungs. Now, a fella couldn’t help but to like a girl like that. She would made a dandy sister, and a fella would just about do anything in the world for such a sister. And she wouldn’t have to ask, at that. He would just naturally want to do things for her, because–well, because he couldn’t help feeling that way. Funny how some wimmin made a man feel like he wanted to just about worship them, and not because they did anything except be just themselves. Now, there was that Mrs. Weston. She was a jim-dandy woman–but she was different. She always seemed to know just what she was going to say and do. And Mrs. Weston’s girl, Alice. Reckon I’d scrap with her right frequent. She was still–“

Dog-gone it! Where was he drifting to? Sylvestre’s sheep were five days crossing the reserve. Smith reported a small fire north of the lookout. The Ainslee boys put the fire out. It hadn’t done any great damage.

Lorry sat back and chewed the lead pencil. As he gazed out of the window across the noon mesa a faint fragrance was wafted through the doorway. He sniffed and grinned. It was the warm flavor of wild turkey, a flavor that suggested crispness, with juicy white meat beneath. Lorry jumped up and grabbed a pail as he left the cabin. On his way back from the spring, Bronson waved to him. Lorry nodded. And presently he presented himself at Bronson’s cabin, his face glowing, his flannel shirt neatly brushed, and a dark-blue silk bandanna knotted gracefully at his throat.

“This is the princess,” said Bronson, gesturing toward his daughter. “And here is the feast.”

“And it was a piano,” continued Bronson as they sat down.

“Really? ‘Way up here?”

“My daughter plays a little,” explained Bronson.

“Well, you’re sure welcome to use that piano any time. If I’m gone, the door is unlocked just the same.”

“Thank you, Mr. Adams, I only play to amuse myself now.”

Lorry fancied there was a note of regret in her last word. He glanced at her. She was gazing wistfully out of the window. It hurt him to see that tinge of hopelessness on her young face.

“This here chicken is fine!” he asserted.

The girl’s eyes were turned to him. She smiled and glanced roguishly at her father. Lorry laughed outright.

“What is the joke?” she demanded.

“Nothin’; only my plate is empty, Miss Bronson.”

Bronson grabbed up carving-knife and fork. “Great Caesar! I must have been dreaming. I _was_ dreaming. I was recalling a turkey hunt down in Virginia with Colonel Stillwell and his man Plato. Plato was a good caller–but we didn’t get a turkey. Now, this is as tender as–as it ought to be. A little more gravy? And as we came home, the colonel, who was of the real mint-julep type, proposed as a joke that Plato see what he could do toward getting some kind of bird for dinner that night. And when Plato lifted the covers, sure enough there was a fine, fat roast chicken. The colonel, who lived in town and did not keep chickens, asked Plato how much he had paid for it. Plato almost dropped the cover. ‘Mars’ George,’ he said with real solicitude in his voice,’ is you sick?’ And speaking of turkeys–“

“Who was speaking of turkeys?” asked Dorothy.

“Why, I think this chicken is superior to any domestic turkey I ever tasted,” concluded Bronson.

“Was you ever in politics?” queried Lorry. And they all laughed heartily.

After dinner Lorry asked for an apron.

Dorothy shook her finger at him. “It’s nice of you–but you don’t mean it.”

“Now, ma wouldn’t ‘a’ said that, miss. She’d ‘a’ just tied one of her aprons on me and turned me loose on the dishes. I used to help her like that when I was a kid. Ma runs the hotel at Stacey.”

“Why, didn’t we stop there for dinner?” asked Dorothy.

“Yes, indeed. All right, Adams, I’ll wash ’em and you can dry ’em, and Dorothy can rest.”

“It’s a right smilin’ little apron,” commented Lorry as Dorothy handed it to him.

“And you do look funny! My, I didn’t know you were so big! I’ll have to get a pin.”

“I reckon it’s the apron looks funny,” said Lorry.

“I made it,” she said, teasing him.

“Then that’s why it is so pretty,” said Lorry gravely.

Dorothy decided to change the subject. “I think you should let me wash the dishes, father.”

“You cooked the dinner, Peter Pan.”

“Then I’ll go over and try the piano. May I?”

“If you’ll play for us when we come over, Miss Bronson.”

Bronson and Lorry sat on the veranda and smoked. Dorothy was playing a sprightly melody. She ceased to play, and presently the sweet old tune “Annie Laurie” came to them. Lorry, with cigarette poised in his fingers, hummed the words to himself. Bronson was watching him curiously. The melody came to an end. Lorry sighed.

“Sounds like that ole piano was just singin’ its heart out all by itself,” he said. “I wish Bud could hear that.”

Almost immediately came the sprightly notes of “Anitra’s Dance.”

“And that’s these here woods–and the water prancin’ down the rocks, and a slim kind of a girl dancin’ in the sunshine and then runnin’ away to hide in the woods again.” And Lorry laughed softly at his own conceit.

“Do you know the tune?” queried Bronson.

“Nope. I was just makin’ that up.”

“That’s just Dorothy,” said Bronson.

Lorry turned and gazed at him. And without knowing how it came about, Lorry understood that there had been another Dorothy who had played and sung and danced in the sunshine. And that this sprightly, slender girl was a bud of that vanished flower, a bud whose unfolding Bronson watched with such deep solicitude.

Chapter XXII

_A Tune for Uncle Bud_

Lorry had ridden to Jason, delivered his reports to the office, and received instructions to ride to the southern line of the reservation. He would be out many days. He had brought down a pack-horse, and he returned to camp late that night with provisions and some mail for the Bronsons.

The next day he delayed starting until Dorothy had appeared. Bronson told him frankly that he was sorry to see him go, especially for such a length of time.

“But I’m glad,” said Dorothy.

Lorry stared at her. Her face was grave, but there was a twinkle of mischief in her eyes. She laughed.

“Because it will be such fun welcoming you home again.”

“Oh, I thought it might be that piano–“

“Now I shan’t touch it!” she pouted, making a deliberate face at him.

He laughed. She did such unexpected things, did them so unaffectedly. Bronson put his arms about her shoulders.

“We’re keeping Mr. Adams, Peter Pan. He is anxious to be off. He has been ready for quite a while and I think he has been waiting till you appeared so that he could say good-bye.”

“Are you anxious to be off?” she queried.

“Yes, ma’am. It’s twenty miles over the ridge to good grass and water.”

“Why, twenty miles isn’t so far!”

“They’s considerable up and down in them twenty miles, Miss Bronson. Now, it wouldn’t be so far for a turkey. He could fly most of the way. But a horse is different, and I’m packin’ a right fair jag of stuff.”

“Well, good-bye, ranger man. Good-bye, Gray Leg,–and you two poor horses that have to carry the packs. Don’t stay away all winter.”

Lorry swung up and started the pack-horses. At the edge of the timber he turned and waved his hat. Dorothy and her father answered with a hearty Good-bye that echoed through the slumbering wood lands.

One of Bronson’s horses raised his head and nickered. “Chinook is saying ‘Adios,’ too. Isn’t the air good? And we’re right on top of the world. There is Jason, and there is St. Johns, and ‘way over there ought to be the railroad, but I can’t see it.”

Bronson smiled down at her.

She reached up and pinched his cheek. “Let’s stay here forever, daddy.”

“We’ll see how my girl is by September. And next year, if you want to come back–“

“Come back! Why, I don’t want to go away–ever!”

“But the snow, Peter Pan.”

“I forgot that. We’d be frozen in tight, shouldn’t we?”

“I’m afraid we should. Shall we look at the mail? Then I’ll have to go to work.”

“Mr. Adams thinks quite a lot of his horses, doesn’t he?” she queried.

“He has to. He depends on them, and they depend on him. He has to take good care of them.”

“I shouldn’t like it a bit if I thought he took care of them just because he had to.”

“Oh, Adams is all right, Peter. I have noticed one or two things about him.”

“Well, I have noticed that he has a tremendous appetite,” laughed Dorothy.

“And you’re going to have, before we leave here, Peter Pan.”

“Then you’d better hurry and get that story written. I want a new saddle and, oh, lots of things!”

Bronson patted her hand as she walked with him to the cabin. He sat down to his typewriter, and she came out with a book.

She glanced up occasionally to watch the ponies grazing on the mesa. She was deeply absorbed in her story when some one called to her. She jumped up, dropping her book.

Bud Shoop was sitting his horse a few paces away, smiling. He had ridden up quietly to surprise her.

“A right lovely mornin’, Miss Bronson. I reckon your daddy is busy.”

“Here I am,” said Bronson, striding out and shaking hands with the supervisor. “Won’t you come in?”

“About that lease,” said Shoop, dismounting. “If you got time to talk business.”

“Most certainly. Dorothy will excuse us.”

“Is Adams gone?”

“He left this morning.”

“Uh-uh. Here, Bondsman, quit botherin’ the young lady.”

“He isn’t bothering. I know what he wants.” And she ran to the kitchen.

Shoop’s face grew grave. “I didn’t want to scare the little lady, Bronson, but Lorry’s father–Jim Waring–has been shot up bad over to Criswell. He went in after that Brewster outfit that killed Pat. I reckon he got ’em–but I ain’t heard.”

“Adams’s father!”

“Yes, Jim Waring. Here comes the little missy. I’ll tell you later. Now Bondsman is sure happy.”

And Bud forced a smile as Dorothy gave the dog a pan of something that looked suspiciously like bones and shreds of turkey meat.

A little later Bud found excuse to call Bronson aside to show him a good place to fence-in the corral. Dorothy was playing with Bondsman.

“Jim’s been shot up bad. I was goin’ to tell you that Annie Adams, over to Stacey, is his wife. She left him when they was livin’ down in Mexico. Lorry is their boy. Now, Jim is as straight as a ruler; I don’t know just why she left him. But let that rest. I got a telegram from the marshal of Criswell. Reads like Jim was livin’, but livin’ mighty clost to the edge. Now, if I was to send word to Lorry he’d just nacherally buckle on a gun and go after them Brewster boys, if they’s any of ’em left. He might listen to me if I could talk to him. Writin’ is no good. And I ain’t rigged up to follow him across the ridge. It’s bad country over there. I reckon I better leave word with you. If he gets word of the shootin’ while he’s out there, he’ll just up and cut across the hills to Criswell a-smokin’. But if he gets this far back he’s like to come through Jason–and I can cool him down, mebby.”

“He ought to know; if his father is–“

“That’s just it. But I’m thinkin’ of the boy. Jim Waring’s lived a big chunk of his life. But they ain’t no use of the kid gettin’ shot up. It figures fifty that I ought to get word to him, and fifty that I ought to keep him out of trouble–“

“I didn’t know he was that kind of a chap: that is, that he would go out after those men–“

“He’s Jim Waring’s boy,” said Bud.

“It’s too bad. I heard of that other killing.”

“Yes. And I’ve a darned good mind to fly over to Criswell myself. I knowed Pat better than I did Jim. But I can’t ride like I used to. But”–and the supervisor sighed heavily–“I reckon I’ll go just the same.”

“I’ll give your message to Adams, Mr. Shoop.”

“All right. And tell him I want to see him. How’s the little lady these days?”

“She seems to be much stronger, and she is in love with the hills and canons.”

“I’m right glad of that. Kind of wish I was up here myself. Why, already they’re houndin’ me down there to go into politics. I guess they want to get me out of this job, ’cause I can’t hear crooked money jingle. My hands feels sticky ever’ time I think of politics. And even if a fella’s hands ain’t sticky–politics money is. Why, it’s like to stick to his feet if he ain’t right careful where he walks!”

“I wish you would stay to dinner, Mr. Shoop.”

“So I’ll set and talk my fool notions–and you with a writin’ machine handy? Thanks, but I reckon I’ll light a shuck for Jason. See my piano?”

“Yes, indeed. Dorothy was trying it a few nights ago.”

“Then she can play. Missy,” and he called to Dorothy, who was having an extravagant romp with Bondsman, “could you play a tune for your Uncle Bud?”

“Of course.” And she came to them.

They walked to the cabin. Bondsman did not follow. He had had a hard play, and was willing to rest.

Dorothy drew up the piano stool and touched the keys. Bud sank into his big chair. Bronson stood in the doorway. By some happy chance Dorothy played Bud’s beloved “Annie Laurie.”

When she had finished, Bud blew his nose sonorously. “I know that tune,” he said, gazing at Dorothy in a sort of huge wonderment. “But I never knowed all that you made it say.”

He rose and shuffled to the doorway, stopping abruptly as he saw Bondsman. Could it be possible that Bondsman had not recognized his own tune? Bud shook his head. There was something wrong somewhere. Bondsman had not offered to come in and accompany the pianist. He must have been asleep. But Bondsman had not been asleep. He rose and padded to Shoop’s horse, where he stood, a statue of rugged patience, waiting for Shoop to start back toward home.

“Now, look at that!” exclaimed Bud. “He’s tellin’ me if I want to get back to Jason in time to catch the stage to-morrow mornin’ I got to hustle. That there dog bosses me around somethin’ scandalous.”

When Shoop had gone, Dorothy turned to her father. “Mr. Shoop didn’t ask me to play very much. He seemed in a hurry.”

“That’s all right, Peter Pan. He liked your playing. But he has a very important matter to attend to.”

“He’s really just delicious, isn’t he?”

“If you like that word, Peter. He is big and sincere and kind.”

“Oh, so were some of the saints for that matter,” said Dorothy, making a humorous mouth at her father.

Chapter XXIII

_Like One Who Sleeps_

Bondsman sat in the doorway of the supervisor’s office, gazing dejectedly at the store across the street. He knew that his master had gone to St. Johns and would go to Stacey. He had been told all about that, and had followed Shoop to the automobile stage, where it stood, sand-scarred, muddy, and ragged as to tires, in front of the post-office. Bondsman had watched the driver rope the lean mail bags to the running-board, crank up the sturdy old road warrior of the desert, and step in beside the supervisor. There had been no other passengers. And while Shoop had told Bondsman that he would be away some little time, Bondsman would have known it without the telling. His master had worn a coat–a black coat–and a new black Stetson. Moreover, he had donned a white shirt and a narrow hint of a collar with a black “shoe-string” necktie. If Bondsman had lacked any further proof of his master’s intention to journey far, the canvas telescope suitcase would have been conclusive evidence.

The dog sat in the doorway of the office, oblivious to the clerk’s friendly assurances that his master would return poco tiempo. Bondsman was not deceived by this kindly attempt to soothe his loneliness.

Toward evening the up-stage buzzed into town. Bondsman trotted over to it, watched a rancher and his wife alight, sniffed at them incuriously, and trotted back to the office. That settled it. His master would be away indefinitely.

When the clerk locked up that evening, Bondsman had disappeared.

As Bronson stepped from his cabin the following morning he was startled to see the big Airedale leap from the veranda of Shoop’s cabin and bound toward him. Then he understood. The camp had been Bondsman’s home. The supervisor had gone to Criswell. Evidently the dog preferred the lonely freedom of the Blue Mesa to the monotonous confines of town.

Bronson called to his daughter. “We have a visitor this morning, Dorothy.”

“Why, it’s Bondsman! Where is Mr. Shoop?”

“Most natural question. Mr. Shoop had to leave Jason on business. Bondsman couldn’t go, so he trotted up here to pay us a visit.”

“He’s hungry. I know it. Come, Bondsman.”

From that moment he attached himself to Dorothy, following her about that day and the next and the next. But when night came he invariably trotted over to Shoop’s cabin and slept on the veranda. Dorothy wondered why he would not sleep at their camp.

“He’s very friendly,” she told her father. “He will play and chase sticks and growl, and pretend to bite when I tickle him, but he does it all with a kind of mental reservation. Yesterday, when we were having our regular frolic after breakfast, he stopped suddenly and stood looking out across the mesa, and it was only my pony, just coming from the edge of the woods. Bondsman tries to be polite, but he is really just passing the time while he is waiting for Mr. Shoop.”

“You don’t feel flattered, perhaps. But don’t you admire him all the more for it?”

“I believe I do. Poor Bondsman! It’s just like being a social pet, isn’t it? Have to appear happy whether you are or not.”

Bondsman knew that she proffered sympathy, and he licked her hand lazily, gazing up at her with bright, unreadable eyes.

* * * * *

Bud Shoop wasted no time in Stacey. He puffed into the hotel, indecision behind him and a definite object in view.

“No use talkin’,” he said to Mrs. Adams. “We got to go and take care of Jim. I couldn’t get word to Lorry. No tellin’ where to locate him just now. Mebby it’s just as well. They’s a train west along about midnight. Now, you get somebody to stay here till we get back–“

“But, Mr. Shoop! I can’t leave like this. I haven’t a thing ready. Anita can’t manage alone.”

“Well, if that’s all, I admire to say that I’ll set right down and run this here hotel myself till you get back. But it ain’t right, your travelin’ down there alone. We used to be right good friends, Annie. Do you reckon I’d tell you to go see Jim if it wa’n’t right? If he ever needed you, it’s right now. If he’s goin’ to get well, your bein’ there’ll help him a pow’ful sight. And if he ain’t, you ought to be there, anyhow.”

“I know it, Bud. I wish Lorry was here.”

“I don’t. I’m mighty glad he’s out there where he is. What do you think he’d do if he knowed Jim was shot up?”

“He would go to his father–“

“Uh-uh?”

“And–“

“Go ahead. You wa’n’t born yesterday.”

“He would listen to me,” she concluded weakly.

“Yep. But only while you was talkin’. That boy is your boy all right, but he’s got a lot of Jim Waring under his hide. And if you want to keep that there hide from gettin’ shot full of holes by a no-account outlaw, you’ll just pack up and come along.”

Bud wiped his forehead, and puffed. This sort of thing was not exactly in his line.

“Here’s the point, Annie,” he continued. “If I get there afore Lorry, and you’re there, he won’t get into trouble. Mebby you could hold him with your hand on the bridle, but he’s runnin’ loose right where he is. Can’t you get some lady in town to run the place?”

“I don’t know. I’ll see.”

Bud heaved a sigh. It was noticeably warmer in Stacey than at Jason.

Bud’s reasoning, while rough, had appealed to Mrs. Adams. She felt that she ought to go. She had only needed some such impetus to send her straight to Waring. The town marshal’s telegram had stunned her. She knew that her husband had followed the Brewsters, but she had not anticipated the awful result of his quest. In former times he had always come back to her, taking up the routine of their home life quietly. But this time he had not come back. If only he had listened to her! And deep in her heart she felt that old jealousy for the lure which had so often called him from her to ride the grim trails of his profession. But this time he had not come back. She would go to him, and never leave him again.

Anita thought she knew of a woman who would take charge of the hotel during Mrs. Adams’s absence. Without waiting for an assurance of this, Bud purchased tickets, sent a letter to his clerk, and spent half an hour in the barber shop.

“Somebody dead?” queried the barber as Bud settled himself in the chair.

“Not that I heard of. Why?”

“Oh, nothing, Mr. Shoop. I seen that you was dressed in black and had on a black tie–“

Later, as Bud surveyed himself in the glass, trying ineffectually to dodge the barber’s persistent whisk-broom, he decided that he did look a bit funereal. And when he appeared at the supper table that evening he wore an ambitious four-in-hand tie of red and yellow. There was going to be no funeral or anything that looked like it, if he knew it.

Aboard the midnight train he made Mrs. Adams comfortable in the chair car. It was but a few hours’ run to The Junction. He went to the smoker, took off his coat, and lit a cigar. Around him men sprawled in all sorts of awkward attitudes, sleeping or trying to sleep. He had heard nothing further about Waring’s fight with the Brewsters. They might still be at large. But he doubted it. If they were–Shoop recalled the friendly shooting contest with High-Chin Bob. If High Chin were riding the country, doubtless he would be headed south. But if he should happen to cross Shoop’s trail by accident–Bud shook his head. He would not look for trouble, but if it came his way it would bump into something solid.

Shoop had buckled on his gun before leaving Jason. His position as supervisor made him automatically a deputy sheriff. But had he been nothing more than a citizen homesteader, his aim would have been quite as sincere.

It was nearly daylight when they arrived at The Junction. Shoop accompanied Mrs. Adams to a hotel. After breakfast he went out to get a buck-board and team. Criswell was not on the line of the railroad.

They arrived in Criswell that evening, and were directed to the marshal’s house, where Ramon met them.

“How’s Jim?” was Shoop’s immediate query.

“The Senor Jim is like one who sleeps,” said Ramon.

Mrs. Adams grasped Shoop’s arm.

“He wakens only when the doctor is come. He has spoken your name, senora.”

The marshal’s wife, a thin, worried-looking woman, apologized for the untidy condition of her home, the reason for which she wished to make obvious. She was of the type which Shoop designated to himself as “vinegar and salt.”

“Reckon I better go in first, Annie?”

“No.” And Mrs. Adams opened the door indicated by the other woman.

Shoop caught a glimpse of a white face. The door closed softly. Shoop turned to Ramon.

“Let’s go take a smoke, eh?”

Ramon led the way down the street and on out toward the desert. At the edge of town, he paused and pointed across the spaces.

“It was out there, senor. I found him. The others were not found until the morning. I did not know that they were there.”

“The others? How many?”

“Three. One will live, but he will never ride again. The others, High of the Chin and his brother, were buried by the marshal. None came to claim them.”

“Were you in it?”

“No, senor. It was alone that Senor Jim fought them. He followed them out there alone. I come and I ask where he is gone. I find him that night. I do not know that he is alive.”

“What became of his horse?”

“Dex he come back with no one on him. It is then that I tell Dex to find for me the Senor Jim.”

“And he trailed back to where Jim went down, eh? Uh-uh! I got a dog myself.”

“Will the Senor Jim ride again?” queried Ramon.

“I dunno, boy, I dunno. But if you and me and the doc and the senora–and mebby God–get busy, why, mebby he’ll stand a chance. How many times was he hit?”

“Two times they shot him.”

“Two, eh? Well, speakin’ from experience, they was three mighty fast guns ag’in’ him. Say five shots in each gun, which is fifteen. And he had to reload, most-like, for he can empty a gun quicker than you can think. Fifteen to five for a starter, and comin’ at him from three ways to once. And he got the whole three of ’em! Do you know what that means, boy? But shucks! I’m forgettin’ times has changed. How they been usin’ you down here?”

“I am sleep in the hay by Dex.”

“Uh-uh. Let that rest. Mebby it’s a good thing, anyhow. Got any money?”

“No, senor. I have use all.”

“Where d’ you eat?”

“I have buy the can and the crackers at the store.”

“Can and crackers, eh? Bet you ain’t had a square meal for a week. But we’ll fix that. Here, go ‘long and buy some chuck till I get organized.”

“Gracias, senor. But I can pray better when I do not eat so much.”

“Good Lord! But, that’s some idee! Well, if wishin’ and hopin’ and such is prayin’, I reckon Jim’ll pull through. I reckon it’s up to the missus now.”

“Lorry is not come?”

“Nope. Couldn’t get to him. When does the mail go out of this bone-hill?”

“I do not know. To-morrow or perhaps the next day.”

“Uh-uh. Well, you get somethin’ to eat, and then throw a saddle on Dex and I’ll give you a couple of letters to take to The Junction. And, come to think, you might as well keep right on fannin’ it for Stacey and home. They can use you over to the ranch. The missus and me’ll take care of Senor Jim.”

“I take the letter,” said Ramon, “but I am come back. I am with the Senor Jim where he goes.”

“Oh, very well, amigo. Might as well give a duck a bar of soap and ask him to take a bath as to tell you to leave Jim. Such is wastin’ talk.”

Chapter XXIV

_The Genial Bud_

“And just as soon as he can be moved, his wife aims to take him over to Stacey.”

So Bud told the Marshal of Criswell, who, for want of better accommodations, had his office in the rear of the general store.

The marshal, a gaunt individual with a watery blue eye and a soiled goatee, shook his head. “The law is the law,” he stated sententiously.

“And a gun’s a gun,” said Shoop. “But what evidence you got that Jim Waring killed Bob Brewster and his brother Tony?”

“All I need, pardner. When I thought Andy Brewster was goin’ to pass over, I took his antimortim. But he’s livin’. And he is bound over to appear ag’in’ Waring. What you say about the killin’ over by Stacey ain’t got nothin’ to do with this here case. I got no orders to hold Andy Brewster, but I’m holdin’ him for evidence. And I’m holdin’ Waring for premeditated contempt and shootin’ to death of said Bob Brewster and his brother Tony. And I got said gun what did it.”

“So you pinched Jim’s gun, eh? And when he couldn’t lift a finger or say a word to stop you. Do you want to know what would happen if you was to try to get a holt of said gun if Jim Waring was on his two feet? Well, Jim Waring would pull said trigger, and Criswell would bury said city marshal.”

“The law is the law. This town’s payin’ me to do my duty, and I’m goin’ to do it.”

“Speakin’ in general, how much do you owe the town so far?”

“Look-a-here! You can’t run no whizzer like that on me. I’ve heard tell of you, Mr. Shoop. No dinky little ole forest ranger can come cantelopin’ round here tellin’ me my business!”

“Mebby I’m dinky, and mebby, I’m old, but your eyesight wants fixin’ if you callin’ me little, old hoss. An’ I ain’t tryin’ to tell you your business. I’m tellin’ you mine, which is that Jim Waring goes to Stacey just the first minute he can put his foot in a buck-board. And he’s goin’ peaceful. I got a gun on me that says so.”

“The law is the law. I can run you in for packin’ concealed weapons, Mr. Shoop.”

“Run me in!” chuckled Shoop. “Nope. You’d spile the door. But let me tell you. A supervisor is a deputy sheriff–and that goes anywhere they’s a American flag. I don’t see none here, but I reckon Criswell is in America. What’s the use of your actin’ like a goat just because you got chin whiskers? I’m tellin’ you Jim Waring done a good job when he beefed them coyotes.”

The marshal’s pale-blue eyes blinked at the allusion to the goat. “Now, don’t you get pussonel, neighbor. The law is the law, and they ain’t no use you talkin’.”

Bud’s lips tightened. The marshal’s reiterated reference to the law was becoming irksome. He would be decidedly impersonal henceforth.

“I seen a pair of walkin’ overalls once, hitched to a two-bit shirt with a chewin’-tobacco tag on it. All that held that there fella together was his suspenders. I don’t recollec’ whether he just had goat whiskers or chewed tobacco, but somebody who had been liquorin’ up told him he looked like the Emperor Maximilian. And you know what happened to Maxy.”

“That’s all right, neighbor. But mebby when I put in my bill for board of said prisoner and feed for his hoss and one Mexican, mebby you’ll quit talkin’ so much, ‘less you got friends where you can borrow money.”

“Your bill will be paid. Don’t you worry about that. What I want to know is: Does Jim Waring leave town peaceful, or have I got to hang around here till he gets well enough to travel, and then show you? I got somethin’ else to do besides set on a cracker barrel and swap lies with my friends.”

“You can stay or you can go, but the law is the law–“

“And a goat is a goat. All right, hombre, I’ll stay.”

“As I was sayin’,” continued the marshal, ignoring the deepening color of Shoop’s face, “you can stay. You’re too durned fat to move around safe, anyhow. You might bust.”

Shoop smiled. He had stirred the musty marshal to a show of feeling. The marshal, who had keyed himself up to make the thrust, was disappointed. He made that mistake, common to his kind, of imagining that he could continue that sort of thing with impunity.

“You come prancin’ into this town with a strange woman, sayin’ that she is the wife of the defendant. Can you tell me how her name is Adams and his’n is Waring?”

“I can!” And with a motion so swift that the marshal had no time to help himself, Bud Shoop seized the other’s goatee and yanked him from the cracker barrel. “I got a job for you,” said Shoop, grinning until his teeth showed.

And without further argument on his part, he led the marshal through the store and up the street to his own house. The marshal back-paddled and struggled, but he had to follow his chin.

Mrs. Adams answered Bud’s knock. Bud jerked the marshal to his knees.

“Apologize to this lady–quick!”

“Why, Mr. Shoop!”

“Yes, it’s me, Annie. Talk up, you pizen lizard!”

“But, Bud, you’re hurting him!”

“Well, I didn’t aim to feed him ice-cream. Talk up, you Gila monster–and talk quick!”

“I apologize,” mumbled the marshal.

Bud released him and wiped his hand on his trousers.

“Sticky!” he muttered.

The marshal shook his fist at Bud. “You’re under arrest for disturbin’ the peace. You’re under arrest!”

“What does it mean?” queried Mrs. Adams.

“Nothin’ what he ain’t swallowed, Annie. Gosh ‘mighty, but I wasted a lot of steam on that there walkin’ clothes-rack! The blamed horn toad says he’s holdin’ Jim for shootin’ the Brewsters.”

“But he can’t,” said Mrs. Adams. “Wait a minute; I’ll be right out. Sit down, Bud. You are tired out and nervous.”

Bud sat down heavily. “Gosh! I never come so clost to pullin’ a gun in my life. If he was a man, I reckon I’d ‘a’ done it. What makes me mad is that I let him get _me_ mad.”

When Mrs. Adams came out to the porch she had a vest in her hand. Inside the vest was pinned the little, round badge of a United States marshal. Bud seized the vest, and without waiting to listen to her he plodded down the street and marched into the general store, where the town marshal was talking to a group of curious natives.

“Can you read?” said Bud, and without waiting for an answer shoved the little silver badge under the marshal’s nose. “The law is the law,” said Bud. “And that there vest belongs to Jim Waring.”

Bud had regained his genial smile. He was too full of the happy discovery to remain silent.

“Gentlemen,” he said, assuming a manner, “did your honorable peace officer here tell you what he said about the wife of the man who is layin’ wounded and helpless in his own house? And did your honorable peace officer tell you-all that it is her money that is payin’ for the board and doctorin’ of Tony Brewster, likewise layin’ wounded and helpless in your midst? And did your honorable peace officer tell you that Jim Waring is goin’ to leave comfortable and peaceful just as soon as the A’mighty and the doc’ll turn him loose? Well, I seen he was talkin’ to you, and I figured he might ‘a’ been tellin’ you these things, but I wa’n’t sure. Was you-all thinkin’ of stoppin’ me? Such doin’s! Why, when I was a kid I used to ride into towns like this frequent, turn ’em bottom side up, spank ’em, and send ’em bawlin’ to their–to their city marshal, and I ain’t dead yet. Now, I come peaceful and payin’ my way, but if they’s any one here got any objections to how I wear my vest or eat my pie, why, he can just oil up his objection, load her, and see that she pulls easy and shoots straight. I ain’t no charity organization, but I’m handin’ you some first-class life insurance free.”

That afternoon Buck Hardy arrived, accompanied by a deputy. Andy Brewster again made deposition that without cause Waring had attacked and killed his brothers. Hardy had a long consultation with Shoop, and later notified Brewster that he was under arrest as an accomplice in the murder of Pat and for aiding the murderer to escape. While circumstantial evidence pointed directly toward the Brewsters, who had threatened openly from time to time to “get” Pat, there was valuable evidence missing in Waco, who, it was almost certain, had been an eye-witness of the tragedy. Waco had been traced to the town of Grant, at which place Hardy and his men had lost the trail. The demolished buckboard had been found by the roadside. Hardy had tracked the automobile to Grant.

Shoop suggested that Waco might have taken a freight out of town. Despite Hardy’s argument that Waco had nothing to fear so far as the murder was concerned, Shoop realized that the tramp had been afraid to face the law and had left that part of the country.

Such men were born cowards, irresolute, weak, and treacherous even to their own infrequent moments of indecision. There was no question but that Waring had acted within the law in killing the Brewsters. Bob Brewster had fired at him at sight. But the fact that one of the brothers survived to testify against Waring opened up a question that would have to be answered in court. Shoop offered the opinion that possibly Andy Brewster, the youngest of the brothers, was not directly implicated in the murder, only taking sides with his brother Bob when he learned that he was a fugitive. In such a premise it was not unnatural that his bitterness toward Waring should take the angle that it did. And it would be difficult to prove that Andy Brewster was guilty of more than aiding his brother to escape.

The sheriff and Shoop talked the matter over, with the result that Hardy dispatched a telegram from The Junction to all the Southern cities to keep a sharp watch for Waco.

Next morning Shoop left for Jason with Hardy and his deputy.

Several days later Waring was taken to The Junction by Mrs. Adams and Ramon, where Ramon left them waiting for the east-bound. The Mexican rode the big buckskin. He had instructions to return to the ranch.

Late that evening, Waring was assisted from the train to the hotel at Stacey. He was given Lorry’s old room. It would be many weeks before he would be strong enough to walk again.

For the first time in his life Waring relinquished the initiative. His wife planned for the future, and Waring only asserted himself when she took it for granted that the hotel would be his permanent home.

“There’s the ranch, Annie,” he told her. “I can’t give that up.”

“And you can’t go back there till I let you,” she asserted, smiling.

“I’ll get Lorry to talk to you about that. I’m thinking of making him an offer of partnership. He may want to set up for himself some day. I married young.”

“I’d like to see the girl that’s good enough for my Lorry.”

Waring smiled. “Or good enough to call you ‘mother.'”

“Jim, you’re trying to plague me.”

“But you will some day. There’s always some girl. And Lorry is a pretty live boy. He isn’t going to ride a lone trail forever.”

Mrs. Adams affected an indifference that she by no means felt.

“You’re a lot better to-day, Jim.”

“And that’s all your fault, Annie.”

She left the room, closing the door slowly. In her own room at the end of the hall, she glanced at herself in the glass. A rosy face and dark-brown eyes smiled back at her.

But there were many things to attend to downstairs. She had been away more than a week. And there was evidence of her absence in every room in the place.

Chapter XXV

_The Little Fires_

With the coming of winter the Blue Mesa reclaimed its primordial solitude. Mount Baldy’s smooth, glittering roundness topped a world that swept down in long waves of dark blue frosted with silver; the serried minarets of spruce and pine bulked close and sprinkled with snow. Blanketed in white, the upland mesas lay like great, tideless lakes, silent and desolate from green-edged shore to shore. The shadowy caverns of the timberlands, touched here and there with a ray of sunlight, thrilled to the creeping fingers of the cold. Tough fibers of the stiff-ranked pines parted with a crackling groan, as though unable to bear silently the reiterant stabbing of the frost needles. The frozen gum of the black spruce glowed like frosted topaz. The naked whips of the quaking asp were brittle traceries against the hard blue of the sky.

Below the rounded shoulders of the peaks ran an incessant whispering as thin swirls of powdered snow spun down the wind and sifted through the moving branches below.

The tawny lynx and the mist-gray mountain lion hunted along snow-banked ranger trails. The blue grouse sat stiff and close to the tree-trunk, while gray squirrels with quaintly tufted ears peered curiously at sinuous forms that nosed from side to side of the hidden trail below.

The two cabins of the Blue Mesa, hooded in white, thrust their lean stovepipes skyward through two feet of snow. The corrals were shallow fortifications, banked breast-high. The silence seemed not the silence of slumber, but that of a tense waiting, as though the whole winter world yearned for the warmth of spring.

No creak of saddle or plod of hoof broke the bleak stillness, save when some wandering Apache hunted the wild turkey or the deer, knowing that winter had locked the trails to his ancient heritage; that the white man’s law of boundaries was void until the snows were thin upon the highest peaks.

Thirty miles north of this white isolation the low country glowed in a sun that made golden the far buttes and sparkled on the clay-red waters of the Little Colorado. Four thousand feet below the hills cattle drifted across the open lands.

Across the ranges, to the south, the barren sands lay shimmering in a blur of summer heat waves; the winter desert, beautiful in its golden lights and purple, changing shadows. And in that Southern desert, where the old Apache Trail melts into the made roads of ranchland and town, Bronson toiled at his writing. And Dorothy, less slender, more sprightly, growing stronger in the clean, clear air and the sun, dreamed of her “ranger man” and the blue hills of her autumn wonderland. With the warmth of summer around her, the lizards on the rocks, and the chaparral still green, she could hardly realize that the Blue Mesa could be desolate, white, and cold. As yet she had not lived long enough in the desert to love it as she loved the wooded hills, where to her each tree was a companion and each whisper of the wind a song.

She often wondered what Lorry was doing, and whether Bondsman would come to visit her when they returned to their cabin on the mesa. She often recalled, with a kind of happy wonderment, Bondsman’s singular visit and how he had left suddenly one morning, heedless of her coaxing. The big Airedale had appeared in Jason the day after Bud Shoop had returned from Criswell. That Bondsman should know, miles from the town, that his master had returned was a mystery to her. She had read of such happenings; her father had written of them. But to know them for the very truth! That was, indeed, the magic, and her mountains were towering citadels of the true Romance.

Long before Bronson ventured to return to his mountain camp, Lorry was riding the hill trails again as spring loosened the upland snows and filled the canons and arroyos with a red turbulence of waters bearing driftwood and dead leaves. With a companion ranger he mended trail and rode along the telephone lines, searching for sagging wires; made notes of fresh down timber and the effect of the snow-fed torrents on the major trails.

Each day the air grew warmer. Tiny green shoots appeared in the rusty tangle of last season’s mesa grasses. Imperceptibly the dull-hued mesas became fresh carpeted with green across which the wind bore a subtly soft fragrance of sun-warmed spruce and pine.

To Lorry the coming of the Bronsons was like the return of old friends. Although he had known them but a short summer season, isolation had brought them all close together. Their reunion was celebrated with an old-fashioned dinner of roast beef and potatoes, hot biscuit and honey, an apple pie that would have made a New England farmer dream of his ancestors, and the inevitable coffee of the high country.

And Dorothy had so much to tell him of the wonderful winter desert; the old Mexican who looked after their horses, and his wife who cooked for them. Of sunshine and sandstorms, the ruins of ancient pueblos in which they discovered fragments of pottery, arrowheads, beads, and trinkets, of the lean, bronzed cowboys of the South, of the cattle and sheep, until in her enthusiasm she forgot that Lorry had always known of these things. And Lorry, gravely attentive, listened without interrupting her until she asked why he was so silent.

“Because I’m right happy, miss, to see you lookin’ so spry and pretty. I’m thinkin’ Arizona has been kind of a heaven for you.”

“And you?” she queried, laughing.

“Well, it wasn’t the heat that would make me call it what it was up here last winter. I rode up once while you was gone. Gray Leg could just make it to the cabin. It wasn’t so bad in the timber. But comin’ across the mesa the cinchas sure scraped snow.”

“Right here on our mesa?”

“Right here, miss. From the edge of the timber over there to this side it was four feet deep on the level.”

“And now,” she said, gesturing toward the wavering grasses. “But why did you risk it?”

Lorry laughed. He had not considered it a risk. “You remember that book you lent me. Well, I left it in my cabin. There was one piece that kep’ botherin’ me. I couldn’t recollect the last part about those ‘Little Fires.’ I was plumb worried tryin’ to remember them verses. When I got it, I sure learned that piece from the jump to the finish.”

“The ‘Little Fires’? I’m glad you like it. I do.

“‘From East to West they’re burning in tower and forge and home,
And on beyond the outlands, across the ocean foam; On mountain crest and mesa, on land and sea and height, The little fires along the trail that twinkle down the night.’

“And about the sheep-herder; do you remember how–

“‘The Andalusian herder rolls a smoke and points the way, As he murmurs, “Caliente,” “San Clemente,” “Santa Fe,” Till the very names are music, waking memoried desires, And we turn and foot it down the trail to find the little fires. Adventuring! Adventuring! And, oh, the sights to see! And little fires along the trail that wink at you and me.'”

“That’s it! But I couldn’t say it like that. But I know some of them little fires.”

“We must make one some day. Won’t it be fun!”

“It sure is when a fella ain’t hustlin’ to get grub. That poem sounds better after grub, at night, when the stars are shinin’ and the horses grazin’ and mebby the pack-horse bell jinglin’ ‘way off somewhere. Then one of them little fires is sure friendly.”

“Have you been reading this winter?”

“Oh, some. Mostly forestry and about the war. Bud was tellin’ me to read