Under Handicap A Novel / Gregory, Jackson, 1882-1943

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Title: Under Handicap
       A Novel

Author: Jackson Gregory

Release Date: March 14, 2006 [EBook #17981]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: CONNISTON HAD SEEN HER FIRST, A HUDDLED HEAP, ALMOST AT
                   HIS FEET]

                            Under Handicap


                               A NOVEL

                          By JACKSON GREGORY



                              AUTHOR OF
                          "The Outlaw," Etc.

                          With Frontispiece


                          A. L. BURT COMPANY
                      Publishers       New York

           Published by arrangement with HARPER & BROTHERS



                 COPYRIGHT, 1914 BY HARPER & BROTHERS




TO
"MY LADY"
LOTUS McGLASHAN GREGORY
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED




UNDER HANDICAP

CHAPTER I


Outside there was shimmering heat and dry, thirsty sand, miles upon
miles of it flashing by in a gray, barren blur. A flat, arid,
monotonous land, vast, threatening, waterless, treeless. Its immensity
awed, its bleakness depressed. Man's work here seemed but to
accentuate the puny insignificance of man. Man had come upon the
desert and had gone, leaving only a line of telegraph-poles with their
glistening wires, two gleaming parallel rails of burning steel to mark
his passing.

The thundering Overland Limited, rushing onward like a frightened
thing, screamed its terror over the desert whose majesty did not even
permit of its catching up the shriek of the panting engine to fling it
back in echoes. The desert ignored, and before and behind the
onrushing train the deep serenity of the waste places was undisturbed.

Within the train the desert was nothing. Man's work defied the heat
and the sand and the sullen frown outside. Here in the Pullman
smoking-car were luxury, comfort, and companionship. Behind drawn
shades were the whir of electric fans, an ebon-faced porter in snowy
linen, the clink of ice in long, misted glasses, the cool fragrance
of crushed mint. Even the fat man in shirt-sleeves reading the Denver
_Times_, alternately drawing upon his fat cigar and sipping the glass
of beer at his elbow, was not distressing to look upon. The four men
busy over their daily game of solo might have been at ease in their
own club.

At one end of the long car two young men dawdled in languid comfort,
their bodies sprawling loosely in two big, soft arm-chairs, a tray
with a couple of half-emptied high-ball glasses upon the table between
them. They had created an atmosphere of their own about them, an
atmosphere constituted of the blue haze from cigarettes mingled with
trivial talk. The immensity outside might have bored them, so their
shade was drawn low. For a moment one of the two men lifted a corner
of it. He peered out, only to drop it with a disgusted sigh and return
to his high-ball.

He was slender, young, pale-eyed, pale-haired, white-handed,
anemic-looking. He was patently of the sort which considers such a
thing as carelessness in the matter of a crease in one's trousers a
crime of crimes. His tie, adjusted with a precision which was a
science, was of a pale lavender. His socks were silk and of the same
color. His eyes were as near a pale lavender as they were near any
color.

"The devilish stupid sameness of this country gets on a man's nerves."
He put his disgust into drawling words. "Suppose it's like this all
the way to 'Frisco?"

His companion, stretching his legs a bit farther under the table, made
no answer.

"I said something then," the lavender young gentleman said, peevishly.
"What's the matter with you, Greek?"

Greek took his arms down from the back of his chair where he had
clasped his hands behind his head, and finished his own high-ball.
Nature in the beginning of things for him had been more kind than to
his petulant friend. He was scarcely more than a boy--twenty-five,
perhaps, from the looks of him--but physically a big man. He might
have weighed a hundred and eighty pounds, and he was maybe an inch
over six feet. But evidently where nature had left off there had been
nobody to go on save the tailor. His gray suit was faultlessly
correct, his linen immaculate, his hose silken and of a brilliant,
dazzling blue. His face was fine, even handsome, but indicating about
as much purpose as did his faultlessly correct shoes. There was an
extreme, unruffled good humor in his eyes and about his mouth, and
with it all as much determination of character as is commonly put into
the rosy face of a wax doll.

"Seeing that you have made the same remark seventeen times since
breakfast," Greek replied, when he had set his empty glass back upon
the tray, "I didn't know that an answer was needed."

"Well, it's so," the pale youth maintained, irritably.

Greek nodded wearily and selected a cigarette from a silver
monogrammed case. The cigarettes themselves were monogrammed, each one
bearing a delicately executed _W. C._ His companion reached out a
shapely hand for the case, at the same time regarding his empty glass.

"Suppose we have another, eh?"

Again Greek nodded. The lavender young man reached the button, and a
bell tinkled in the little buffet at the far end of the car. The negro
lazily polishing a glass put it down, glanced at the indicator, and
hastened to put glasses and bottles upon a tray.

"The same, suh?" he asked, coming to the table and addressing Greek.

It was the pale young man who assured him that it was to be the same,
but it was Greek who threw a dollar bill upon the tray.

"Thank you, suh. Thank you." The negro bobbed as he made the proper
change--and returned it to his own pocket.

Greek appeared not to have seen him or heard. He poured his own drink
and shoved the bottles toward his friend, who helped himself with
skilful celerity.

"Suppose the old gent will hold out long this time, Greek?" came the
query, after a swallow of the whisky and seltzer, a shrewd look in the
pale eyes.

Greek laughed carelessly.

"I guess we'll have time to see a good deal of San Francisco before he
caves in. The old man put what he had to say in words of one syllable.
But we won't worry about that until we get there."

"Did he shell out at all?"

"He didn't quite give me carte blanche," retorted Greek, grinning. "A
ticket to ride as far as I wanted to, and five hundred in the long
green. And it's going rather fast, Roger, my boy."

"And my tickets came out of the five hundred?"

Greek nodded.

"It's devilish the way my luck's gone lately," grumbled Roger. "I
don't know when I can ever pay--"

Greek put up his hand swiftly.

"You don't pay at all," he said, emphatically. "This is my treat. It
was mighty decent of you to drop everything and come along with me
into this d----d exile. And," he finished, easily, "I'll have more
money than I'll know what to do with when the old man gets
soft-hearted again."

"He's d----d hard on you, Greek. He's got more--"

"Oh, I don't know." Greek laughed again. "He's a good sort, and we get
along first rate together. Only he's got some infernally uncomfortable
ideas about a man going to work and doing something for himself in
this little old vale of tears. He shaves himself five times out of
six, and I've seen him black his own boots!" He chuckled amusedly.
"Just to show people he can, you know."

Roger shook his head and applied himself to his glass, failing to see
the humor of the thing. And while the bigger man continued to muse
with twinkling eyes over the idiosyncrasies of an enormously wealthy
but at the same time enormously hard-headed father, with old-fashioned
ideas of the dignity of labor, Roger sat frowning into his glass.

The silence, into which the click of the rails below had entered so
persistently as to become a part of it rather than to disturb it, was
broken at last by the clamorous screaming of the engine. The train was
slackening its speed. Greek flipped up the shade and looked out.

"Another one of those toy villages," he called over his shoulder. "Who
in the devil would want to get off here?"

Roger sank a trifle deeper into his chair, indicating no interest. The
fat man had dropped his newspaper to the floor and was leaning out the
window.

"Great country, ain't it?" he called to Greek.

"Yes, it certainly _ain't_! What gets me is, why do people live in a
place like this? Are they all crazy?"

The train now was jerking and bumping to a standstill. Sixty yards
away was a little, bluish-gray frame building, by far the most
pretentious of the clutter of shacks, flaunting the legend, "Prairie
City." Beyond the station was the to-be-expected general store and
post-office. A bit farther on a saloon. Beyond that another, and then
straggling at intervals a dozen rough, rambling, one-storied board
houses. For miles in all directions the desert stretched dry and
barren. The faces of women and children peered out of windows, the
forms of roughly garbed men lounged in the doorways of the store and
the saloons. All the denizens of Prairie City manifested a mild
interest in the arrival of Number 1.

"I guess you called the turn," sputtered the fat man. "Here come the
crazy folks now!"

A cloud of dust swirling higher and higher in the still air, the
clatter of hoofs, and two horses swept around the farthest house,
carrying their riders at breakneck speed into the one and only street.
At first Greek took it to be a race, and then he thought it a runaway.
As it was the first interesting incident since Grand Central Station
had dropped out of sight four days ago, he craned his neck to watch.

The two riders were half-way down the street now, a tall bay forging
steadily ahead of a little Mexican mustang until ten feet or more
intervened between the two horses. The train jerked; the Wells Fargo
man, with his truck alongside the express-car far ahead, yelled
something to the man who had taken his packages aboard.

"The bay wins," grinned the fat man. "It looks--Gad! It's a woman!"

Greek saw that it was a woman in khaki riding-habit, and that the
spurs she wore were gnawing into her horse's flanks. He began to take
a sudden, stronger interest. He leaned farther out, hardly realizing
that he had called to the conductor to hold the train a moment. For it
was at last clear that these were not mad people, but merely a couple
of the dwellers of the desert anxious to catch Number 1. But the
conductor had waved his orders and was swinging upon the slowly moving
steps. From the windows of the train a score of heads were thrust out,
a score of voices raised in shouting encouragement. And down to the
tracks the woman and the man behind her rushed, their horses' feet
seeming never to touch the ground.

A bump, a jar, a jerk, and the Limited was drawing slowly away from
the station. The woman was barely fifty yards away. As she lifted her
head Greek saw her face for the first time. And, having seen her ride,
he pursed his lips into a low whistle of amazement.

"Why, she's only a kid of a girl!" gasped the fat man. "And, say,
ain't she sure a peach!"

Greek didn't answer. He was busy inwardly cursing the conductor for
not waiting a second longer. For it was obvious to him that the girl
was going to miss the train by hardly more than that.

But she had not given up. She had dropped her head again and was
rushing straight toward the side of the string of cars. Greek held his
breath, a swift alarm for her making his heart beat trippingly. He did
not see how she could stop in time.

Again a clamor of voices from the heads thrust out of car windows,
warning, calling, cheering. And then suddenly Greek sat back limply.
The thing had been so impossible and in the end so amazingly simple.

Not ten feet away from the train she had drawn in her horse's reins,
"setting up" the half-broken animal upon his four feet, bunched
together so that with the momentum he had acquired he slid almost to
the cars. As he stopped the girl swung lightly from the saddle and,
seeming scarcely to have put foot upon the sandy soil, caught the
hand-rail as the car came by and swung on to the lowest step. The man
behind her caught up her horse's reins, whirled, sweeping his hat off
to her, and turned back.

"Which is some riding, huh?" chuckled the fat man, his own head
withdrawn as he reached for his beer-glass.

"What's the excitement?" Roger's interest had not been great enough to
send him to the window.

"Some people trying to catch the train," Greek told him, shortly. For
some reason, not clear to himself, he did not care to be more
definite.

"I don't blame the poor devils. Think of waiting there until another
came by!" Roger washed the dryness out of his mouth with a generous
sip of his whisky and seltzer.

The fat man finished his glass of beer and rang for another. Greek sat
gazing out over the wide wastes of the desert. He had never before
been in a land like this. Now that more than two thousand miles
lengthened out between him and New York, he had felt himself more than
ever an exile. Heretofore he had given no thought to the people
dwelling here beyond the last reaches of those things for which
civilization stood to him. He was not in the habit of thinking deeply.
That part of the day's work could be left to William Conniston,
Senior, while William Conniston, Junior, more familiarly known to his
intimates as "Greek" Conniston, found that he could dispense with
thinking every bit as easily as he could spend the money which flowed
into his pockets. But now, as unexpectedly as a flash from a dead
fire, a girl's face had startled him, and he found himself almost
thinking--wondering--

Conniston turned swiftly. The girl was passing down the long narrow
hallway leading by the smoking-car, evidently seeking the
observation-car. Through the windows he could see her shoulders and
face as she walked by him. He could see that there was the same
confidence in her carriage now that there had been when she had jerked
her horse to a standstill and had thrown herself to the ground. Even
Roger, turning idly, uttered an exclamation of surprised interest.

She was dressed in a plain, close-fitting riding-habit which hid
nothing of the undulating grace of her active young body. In her hand
she carried the riding-quirt and the spurs which she had not had time
to leave behind. Her wide, soft gray hat was pushed back so that her
face was unhidden. And as she walked by her eyes rested for a fleeting
second upon the eyes of Greek Conniston.

Her cheeks were flushed rosily from her race, the warm, rich blood
creeping up to the untanned whiteness of her brow. But he did not
realize these details until she had gone by; not, in fact, until he
began to think of her. For in that quick flash he saw only her eyes.
And to this man who had known the prettiest women who drive on Fifth
Avenue and dine at Sherry's and wear wonderful gowns to the
Metropolitan these were different eyes. Their color was elusive, as
elusive as the vague tints upon the desert as dusk drifts over it;
like that calm tone of the desert resolved into a deep, unfathomable
gray, wonderfully soft, transcendently serene. And through the
indescribable color as through untroubled skies at dawn there shone
the light which made her, in some way which he could not entirely
grasp, different from the women he had known. He merely felt that
their light was softly eloquent of frankness and health and cleanness.
Their gaze was as steady and confident as her hand had been upon her
horse's reins.

"She must have been born in this wilderness, raised in it!" he mused,
when she had passed. "Her eyes are the eyes of a glorious young
animal, bred to the freedom of outdoors, a part of the wild, untamable
desert! And her manner is like the manner of a great lady born in a
palace!"

"Hey, Greek," Roger was saying, his droning voice coming unpleasantly
into the other's musings, "did you pipe that? Did you ever see
anything like her?"

Conniston lighted a fresh cigarette and turned again to look out
across the level gray miles. Ignoring his friend, Greek thought on,
idly telling himself that the Dream Girl should be born out here,
after all. Here she would have a soul; a soul as far-reaching, as
infinite, as free from shackles of convention as the wide bigness of
her cradle. And she would have eyes like that, drawing their very
shade from the vague grayness which seemed to him to spread over
everything.

"I say, Greek," Roger was insisting, sufficiently interested to sit up
straight, his cigarette dangling from his lip, "that little country
girl, dressed like a wild Indian, is pretty enough to be the belle of
the season! What do you think?"

Conniston laughed carelessly.

"You're an impressionable young thing, Hapgood."

"Am I?" grunted Roger. "Just the same, I know a fine-looking woman
when I clap my bright eyes on her. And I'd like to camp on her trail
as long as the sun shines! Say"--his voice half losing its eternal
drawl--"who do you suppose she is? Her old man might own about a
million acres of this God-forsaken country. If she goes on through to
'Frisco--"

"You wouldn't be strong for stopping off out here?" the fat man put in
genially. Hapgood shuddered.

And to Greek Conniston there came a sudden inspiration.

"Anyway," Roger Hapgood went on in his customary drawl, "I'm going to
find out. It's little Roger to learn something about the prairie
flower. I'll soon tell you who she is," he added, rising from his
seat.

But he never did. For one thing, young Conniston was not there when
Roger returned five minutes later, and it is extremely doubtful if
Roger Hapgood would have told how his venture had fared. Being duly
impressed with the fascination of his own debonair little person, and
having the imagination of a cow, he had smirked his way to the girl,
who now sat in the observation-car, and had begun on the weather.

"Dreadfully warm in this desert country, isn't it?" he said, with
over-politeness and the smile which he knew to be irresistible.

The girl turned from gazing out the window, and her eyes met his, very
clear and very much amused.

"Very warm," she smiled back at him. Even then he had a faint fear
that she was not so much smiling as laughing. "The surprising thing is
how well things keep, is it not?"

"Ah--yes," he murmured, not entirely confident, and still dropping
into a chair at her side. "You mean--"

"How fresh some things keep!"

Roger Hapgood's pink little face went violently red.

"I say!" he began. "I didn't mean any offense. I thought--"

"Oh, that's all right," she laughed, gaily. "No offense whatever. Will
you please open that window for me?"

His face became normally pink again as he hastened to throw up the
window in front of her. His eyelid fluttered downward as he met the
regard of a couple of men facing them. Then he came back to her side.

"Thank you," she smiled sweetly up at him. And she held out her hand.

He didn't know what she wanted to do that for, but had a confused idea
that in the free and easy spirit of the West she was going to shake
hands. The next thing which he realized clearly was that she had
dropped a shining ten-cent piece into his palm.

"Oh, look here," he stammered, only to be interrupted by her voice, a
gurgle of suppressed mirth in it.

"I'm sorry that that's all I have in change! And now, if you will hand
me that magazine--I want to read!"

Roger Hapgood fumbled with the dime and dropped it. He swept up the
magazine from a near-by chair and held it out to her. As he did so he
caught a glimpse of the faces of the two men at whom he had winked so
knowingly, heard one of them break into loud, hearty laughter.
Dropping the magazine to her lap, the lavender young man, with what
dignity he could command, marched back to the smoking-car.

A few minutes later Greek Conniston, returning to the smoking-car,
found his friend pinching his smooth cheek thoughtfully and frowning
out the window. He dropped into his chair, deep in thought. In the
brief interval he had taken his resolution, plunging, as was his
careless nature, after the first impulse. The girl had interested him;
he did not yet realize how much. She came aboard the train without bag
or baggage. Certainly she could not be going far. And he--it didn't
matter in the least where he went. All that he had to do was to keep
out of his father's way until the old man cooled down, and then to
wire for money. His ticket read to San Francisco, but he had no desire
to go there rather than to any other place. And he told himself that
he had a sort of curiosity about this bleak, monotonous desert land.

An hour later the train ran into another little clutter of buildings
and drew up, puffing, at the station. Conniston's eyes were alert,
fixed upon the passageway from the observation-car rather than on the
view from his window. Mail-bags were tossed on and off, a few packages
handled by the Wells Fargo man, and the train pulled out. Conniston
leaned back with a sigh.

"Roger," he said, at last, "I've got a proposition to make."

"Well?"

"Let's drop off at one of these dinky towns and see what it's like.
I've a notion we might find something new."

"That's a real joke, I suppose?"

"Not at all," maintained Conniston. "I'm going to do it. Are you with
me?"

Hapgood sat bolt upright.

"Are you crazy, man!" he cried, sharply.

Conniston shrugged. "Why not? You've never seen anything but city life
and the summer-resort sort of thing any more than I have. It would be
a lark."

"Excuse me! I guess I'm something of a fool for having chased clean
across the continent, but I'm not the kind of fool that's going to
pick a place like this sand-pile to drop off in!"

"All right, old man. Nobody's asking you to if you feel that way."

Hapgood waited as long as he could for Conniston to go on, and when
there came no further information he asked, incredulously:

"You don't mean that, do you, Greek? You don't intend to stop off all
alone out here in this rotten wilderness?"

"Yes, I do. If you won't stop with me."

"But how about me? What am I to do? Here I am--busted! What do you
think I'm going to do?"

"You can go on to San Francisco if you like. You can have half of what
I've got left--or you can drop off with me."

Hapgood argued and exploded and sulked by turns. In the end, seeing
the futility of trying to reason with a man who only laughed, and
seeing further the disadvantage of being cut off from his source of
easy money, Roger gave in, growling. So when the train drew into
Indian Creek that afternoon there were three people who got down from
it.




CHAPTER II


Indian Creek stood lonely and isolated in the flat, treeless,
sun-smitten desert. Only in the south was the unbroken flatness
relieved by a low-lying ridge of barren brown hills, their sides cut
as by erosion into steep, stratified cliffs. Even these bleak hills
looked to be twenty miles away, and were in reality fifty. Beyond
them, softened and blurred by the distance, was a blue-gray line where
the mountains were.

"Of all the wretched holes in the world!" fumed Hapgood.

But Conniston didn't hear him. The girl had stepped down from the
train, and, without casting a glance behind her, walked swiftly across
the wriggling thing which stood for a street in Indian Creek. There
was a saloon with a long hitching-pole in front of it, to which a
couple of saddle-horses were tied, and a buckboard with two fretting
two-year-olds in dust-covered harness. A man, a swarthy half-breed,
with hair and eyes and long, pointed mustaches of inky blackness, was
on the seat, handling the jerking reins. He called a soft "_Adios,
compadre_" to the man lounging in the doorway, and swung his colts out
into the road, making a sweeping half-circle, bringing them to a
restless halt, pawing and fighting their bits, at the girl's side.
While with one brown hand he held them back, with the other he swept
off his wide, black hat.

"How do, Mess!" he cried, softly, his teeth flashing a white greeting.

She answered him with a "Hello, Joe!" as she climbed to his side.

Joe loosened his reins a very little, called sharply to his horses,
and in a whirlwind of dust the buckboard made an amazingly sharp turn
and shot rattling down the road and out toward the mountains in the
south.

"And now what?" grinned Hapgood, maliciously. "Even your country girl
has gone!"

Greek Conniston gazed a moment after the flying buckboard, a vague,
wavering, unreal thing, through the dust of its own making, and,
hiding his disappointment under a shrug, turned to Hapgood.

"Now for a hotel somewhere, if the place has one. Come on, Roger.
We're in for it now, so let's make the best of it."

Carrying his suit-case, he strode off toward the saloon, Roger
following silently. The lanky, sunburned individual in the doorway
watched their approach idly for a moment and then turned his lazy eyes
to a cow and calf trudging past toward the watering-trough.

"Hello, friend!" called Conniston.

The lanky individual drew his eyes from the cow and calf, bestowed a
long look and a fleeting nod upon the two strangers, and turned again
toward the trough, little impressed, little interested in the
Easterners.

"I say!" went on Conniston, brusquely. "Where'll a man get a room
here?"

"Down to the hotel."

"So you do have a hotel? Where is it?"

The lazy individual ducked his head toward the east end of the
street, cast a last look at the cow and calf, and, turning, went back
into the saloon.

"Nice sort of people," grunted Hapgood.

Conniston laughed. "Buck up, Roger," he grinned, his own spurt of
irritation lost in his enjoyment of Hapgood's greater bitterness.
"It's different, anyhow, isn't it? Come on. Let's see what the hotel
looks like."

The hotel was a saloon with a long bar at the front, a little room
just off, containing a couple of tables covered with red oil-cloth.
Beyond were half a dozen six-by-six rooms separated from one another
by partitions rising to within two feet of the unceiled roof. The
proprietor, busy with some local friends in the card-room, saw the two
young men come in and yelled, lustily:

"Mary!"

Mary, a stout and comfortable-looking woman, appeared from the
kitchen, wiping her hands upon her blue apron, and with a sharp glance
at the newcomers bobbed her head at them and said, briefly, "Howdy."

Conniston took off his hat and came into the bar-room. Roger, with a
careless glance at the woman, came in without taking off his hat and
dropped into one of the rickety chairs against the wall. And there he
sat until Conniston had negotiated for two rooms for the night. Then
he got jerkily to his feet and stalked after his friend and their
hostess to the back of the house. A moment later he and Conniston,
left alone, sat upon their two beds and stared at each other through
the doorway connecting their rooms. Conniston studied the bare floors,
the bare walls of rough, unplaned twelve-inch boards set upright with
cracks between them ranging from a quarter of an inch to an inch in
width, and, rumpling up his hair, sat back and grinned into Hapgood's
woebegone face. And Hapgood after the same examination and a sight of
the rough beds covered with patchwork comforters, groaned aloud.

"Maybe it's funny," he muttered. "But if it is, I don't see it."

"What are you going to do about it?" chuckled Conniston. "You can't
fling out and go to the rival hotel, because there isn't any! You
can't sleep outdoors very well. And you can't catch a train until a
train comes. Which, I believe, will be sometime to-morrow morning."

It was already late afternoon. That day Roger Hapgood got no farther
than the bar-room at the front of the house. There he sat in one of
the rickety chairs, brooding, sullen, and silent, smoking cigarettes,
drinking high-balls, and cursing the whole God-forsaken West. And
there Conniston left him.

In spite of his naturally buoyant spirits, in spite of the fact that
he knew he had only to swing upon the next train which came through,
Conniston felt suddenly depressed. The silence was a tangible thing
almost, and he felt shut out from the world, lost to his kind,
marooned upon a bleak, inhospitable island in an ocean of sand. The
few men whom he met upon the sun-baked street eyed him with an
indifference which was worse than actual hostility. When he spoke they
nodded briefly and passed on. It was clear that if he looked upon them
as aliens, they looked upon him as a being with whom and whose class
they had nothing in common, no desire to have anything in common. For
a moment his good nature died down before a flash of anger that these
beings, with little, circumscribed existences, should feel and
manifest toward him the same degree of contempt that he, a visitor
from a higher plane of life, experienced toward them. But in Greek
Conniston good humor was a habit, and it returned as he assured
himself that what these desert-dwellers felt was worth only his
amusement.

At the store he bought some tobacco for his pipe and engaged the
storekeeper in trifling conversation. The talk was desultory and for
the most part led nowhere. But the little, brown, wizened old man,
contemplatively chewing his tobacco like a gentle cow ruminating over
her cud, answered what scattering questions Conniston put to him. The
young man learned that the town took its name from the stream which
crept rather than ran through it to spread out on the thirsty sands a
few miles to the north, where it was absorbed by them. That the creek
came from the hills to the south, and from the mountains beyond them.
When one crossed the brown hills he came to the Half Moon country and
into a land of many wide-reaching cattle-ranges.

"I saw a team drive out that way after the train came in," said
Conniston, carelessly. "Headed for one of the cattle-ranges, I
suppose?"

The old man spat and nodded, wiping his scanty gray beard with his
hand.

"That was Joe from the Half Moon. Took the ol' man's girl out."

"I did see a young lady with him. She lives out there?"

"Uh-uh." The old man got up to wait upon a customer, a cowboy, from the
loose, shaggy black "chaps," the knotted neck handkerchief, the
clanking spurs and heavy, black-handled Colt revolver at his hip. He
bought large quantities of smoking-tobacco and brown cigarette-papers,
"swapped the news" with the storekeeper, and clanked his way across to
the saloon. He did not appear to have seen Conniston.

"The girl's father run a cattle-range out there?"

"Uh-uh. The Half Moon an' three or four smaller ranges. He's old man
Crawford--p'r'aps you've heard on him?"

Conniston shook his head, suppressing a smile.

"I don't think I have. Far out to his place?"

"Oh, it ain't bad. Let's see. It's fifty mile to the hills, an' he's
about forty mile fu'ther on." He stopped for a brief mental
calculation. "That makes it about ninety mile, huh?"

"How does a man get out there? A narrow-gauge running from somewhere
along the main line?"

"Darn narrow, stranger. You can walk if you're strong for that kind of
exercise. Mos' folks rides. Goin' out?"

"It's rather a long walk," Conniston evaded. And shortly afterward,
hearing a clanging bell up the street in the direction of the hotel,
he strolled away to his dinner.

He found Hapgood scowling into his high-ball glass and dragged him
away to the little dining-room. Both the tables were set. At one of
them the cowboy whom he had seen at the store was already eating with
two of his companions. Conniston and Hapgood were shown to the other
table by the stout Mary. Hapgood cast one glance at the stew and
coarse-looking bread put before him, and pushed his plate away.
Conniston, who had had fewer high-balls and more fresh air, actually
enjoyed his meal. The men at the other table glanced across at them
once and seemed to take no further interest.

Hapgood waited, bored and conventional, until Conniston had finished,
and then the two went back into the bar-room. The sun had gone down,
leaving in the west flaring banners of brilliant, changing colors. The
heat of the day had gone with the setting of the sun, a little lost,
wandering breeze springing up and telling of the fresh coolness of the
coming night. And it was still day, a day softened into a gray
twilight which hung like a misty veil over the desert.

From the card-room came the voices of the proprietor and the men with
whom he was still playing. They had not stopped for their supper,
would not think of eating for hours to come.

"If you feel like excitement--" began Conniston, jerking his head in
the direction of the card-room.

Hapgood interrupted shortly. "No, thanks. I've got a magazine in my
suit-case. I suppose I'll sit up reading it until morning, for I
certainly am not going to crawl into that cursed bed! And in the
morning--"

"Well? In the morning?"

"Thank God there's a train due then!"

Conniston left him and went out into the twilight. He passed by the
store, by the saloon, along the short, dusty street, and out into the
dry fields beyond. He followed the road for perhaps a half-mile and
then turned away to a little mound of earth rising gently from the
flatness about it. And there he threw himself upon the ground and let
his eyes wander to the south and the faint, dark line which showed him
where the hills were being drawn into the embrace of the night
shadows.

The utter loneliness of this barren world rested heavy upon his
gregarious spirit. Sitting with his back to Indian Creek, he could see
no moving, living thing in all the monotony of wide-reaching
landscape. He was enjoying a new sensation, feeling vague, restless
thoughts surge up within him which were so vague, so elusive as to be
hardly grasped. At first it was only the loneliness, the isolation and
desolation of the thing which appalled him. Then slowly into that
feeling there entered something which was a kind of awe, almost an
actual fear. A man, a man like young Greek Conniston, was a small
matter out here; the desert a great, unmerciful, unrelenting God.

First loneliness, then awe tinged with a vague fear, and then
something which Conniston had never felt before in his life. A great,
deep admiration, a respect, a soul-troubling yearning toward the very
thing from which his city-trained senses shrank. He was experiencing
what the men who live upon its rim or deep in its heart are never free
from feeling. For all men fear the desert; and when they know it they
hate it, and even then the magic of it, brewed in the eternal
stillness, falls upon them, and though they draw back and curse it,
they love it! The desert calls, and he who hears must heed the call.
It calls with a voice which talks to his soul. It calls with the dim
lure of half-dreamed things. It beckons with the wavering streamers of
gold and crimson light thrown across the low horizon at sunrise and
sunset.

Greek Conniston was not an introspective man. His life, the life of a
rich man's son, had left little room for self-examination of mood and
purpose and character. He had done well enough during his four years
in the university, not because he was ambitious, but simply because
he was not a fool and found a mild satisfaction in passing his
examinations. Nature had cast him in a generous physical mold, and he
had aided nature on diamond and gridiron. He had taken his place in
society, had driven his car and ridden his horses. He had through it
all spent the money which came in a steady stream from the ample
coffers of William Conniston, Senior. His had been a busy life, a life
filled with dinners and dances and theaters and races. He had not had
time to think. And certainly he had not had need to think.

But now, under the calm gaze of the desert, he found himself turning
his thoughts inward. He had been driven out of his father's house. He
had been called a dawdler and a trifler and a do-nothing. He had been
told by a stern old man who was a _man_ that he was a disgrace to his
name. He had never done anything but dance and smoke and drink and
make pretty speeches which were polite lies and which were accepted as
such. And now a minor note, as thin as a low-toned human voice heard
faintly through the deep music of a cathedral organ, something seemed
to call to him telling him again of these things.

The darkening line where the far-away hills in the south were dragged
deeper and deeper into the night drew his wandering thoughts away from
himself and sent them skimming after the girl he had seen that day.
Somewhere out there she was moving across the desert, plunged into the
innermost circle of the grim solitude. He remembered her eyes and the
look he had seen in them. He could see her again as she jerked in her
plunging horse, as she caught the step of the swiftly moving train.
The desert had called her; and she, purposeful, strong, as clean of
soul, he felt, as she was of body, had answered the call. With the
compelling desire to know her springing full-grown from his first
swift interest in her, his fancies, touched by the subtle magic of the
desert, showed her to him out yonder with the dusk and the silence
about her. He got to his feet and stood staring into the gathering
gloom as though he would make out across the flat miles the flying
buckboard.

"After all," he told himself, with a restless, half-reckless little
laugh, "why not?"

He turned and went back toward the town. On his way he overtook a boy,
a little fellow of eight or nine, driving a milk-cow ahead of him. He
found him the shy, wordless child he had expected, but chatted with
him none the less, and by the time they had reached the first of the
scattered buildings the boy had thawed a little and responded to
Conniston's talk. After the brief, somewhat uncomfortable lonesomeness
of a moment ago Conniston found himself glad of any company. And upon
leaving the boy at a tumbled-down house a bit farther on he found a
half-dollar in his pocket and proffered it.

"Here, Johnny," he said, smiling. "This is for some candy."

The boy put his hands behind his back. "My name's William," he said,
with a quiet, odd dignity. "An' I don't take money off'n no one 'less
I work for it!"

"My name's William, too, my boy," Conniston answered, much amused;
"but you and I have very different ideas about taking money!"

"Proud little cuss," he told himself, as he strode on along the
street. "Wonder who taught him that?"

Here and there in the dull dome above him the stars were beginning to
come out. On either hand the pale-yellow rays from kerosene-lamps
straggled through windows and doors, making restless shadows
underfoot. From the door of the saloon the brightest light crept out
into the night. And with it came men's voices. Having a desire for
companionship, and not craving that of Hapgood in his present mood,
Conniston stepped in at the low door, and, going to the bar, called
for a glass of beer. There were half a dozen men, among whom he
recognized the proprietor of the "hotel" and the men with whom he had
been playing cards, and also the cowboys who had eaten at the other
table. In the center of the room, under a big nickeled swinging-lamp,
a man was dealing faro while the others standing or sitting about him
made their bets. A glance told Conniston that the hotel man was
playing heavily, his chips and gold stacked high in front of him.

"The strange part of it," he thought, as he watched the bartender open
his bottle of beer, "is where they get so much money! Do they make it
out of sand?"

He invited the bartender to drink with him, chatted a moment, and then
strolled over to the table. The dealer, a thick-set, fat-fingered,
grave-eyed man who moved like a piece of machinery, glanced up at him
and back to his game. There was no "lookout." A man whom he had not
seen before, deft-fingered and alert, was keeping cases. The
proprietor of the hotel, the three cowboys, and one other man were
playing.

Familiar with the greater number of common ways of separating oneself
from his money, Conniston was no stranger to the ways of faro. He
watched the fat fingers of the banker as they slipped card after card
from the box, and smiled to himself at the fellow's slowness. And
before half a dozen plays were made his smile was succeeded by a
little shock of surprise. It certainly did not do to judge people out
here in a flash and by external signs. What seemed awkwardness a
moment ago was now perfected, automatic skill.

The hotel man won and lost, his face always inscrutable, tilted
sidewise as he closed one eye against the up-curling smoke from the
cigar which he turned round and round between his pursed lips. He had
in front of him a stack of ten or twelve twenty-dollar gold pieces
which his fingers continually moved and shifted, breaking them into
several smaller stacks, bringing them together again, slipping one
over another, gathering them into one stack, breaking them down again,
so that the golden disks gave out the low musical clink which rose at
all times faint and clear through the few short-spoken words. And
meanwhile his eyes never left the table and the box.

At the end of the sixth deal he coppered his bet and leaned back to
light a fresh cigar. He stood already a hundred dollars to the good.
One of the cowboys was winning, having taken in something like twenty
or thirty dollars since Conniston came in. The other two were playing
recklessly and with little skill, and were losing steadily. The fifth
man contented himself with small bets.

Presently the younger of the two cowboys, the fellow whom Conniston
had seen at the store in the afternoon, shoved his last two dollars
and a half onto the table, lost, and got to his feet, shrugging his
shoulders.

"Cleaned," he grunted, laconically. "Gimme a drink, Smiley."

He went to the bar with one lingering look behind him. And in another
play or two his companion followed him.

"No kind of luck, Jimmie," he said to the first to be "cleaned."
"Ain't it sure enough hell how steady a man can lose?"

"Bein' as my luck took a day off six months ago an' ain't showed up
yet," retorted Jimmie, "I guess I'd ought to had sense to leave
inves'ments like the bank alone. Only I ain't got the gumption. An'
I'm always figgerin' it's about time for my luck to git over her
vacation an' come back to work. How much did you drop, Bart?"

"Forty bucks," returned Bart, reaching for the whisky-bottle. "Which
same forty was all I had. Here's how."

"How," repeated his companion.

"I'm laying you a bet," said Conniston, quietly, coming toward them
from the table.

Jimmie put down his glass, stared reminiscently at it for a moment,
and then, lifting his eyebrows, turned to Conniston. "Evenin',
stranger. You might have made a remark?"

"If your luck has been working for other people for six months it's my
bet that it's on the way home to you right now! I don't mean any
offense, and I am not sure of your customs out here. But I'll stake
you to five dollars and take half what you win."

Jimmie grinned and put out his hand. "Which I call darn good custom,
East _or_ West!"

For a few minutes it looked as though Conniston's money were going to
retrieve the cowboy's losses. Jimmie had already twenty dollars in
front of him. And then a gambler's "hunch," a staking of everything on
one play, and Jimmie sat back with nothing to do but roll a cigarette.

"I might have giv' back your fiver a minute ago, but now--"

He ended by licking his brown cigarette-paper together. But his credit
was good with the bartender, and Conniston and Bart joined him in
having a drink.

"It looks like my luck had started back toward the home corrals all
right," said Jimmie, with a meditative smile. "Only she wasn't strong
enough to make it all the way. She got weak in the knees an' went to
sleep on the road. Now, if I had a fist full of money--" He sighed the
rest into his glass.

"If the stranger," put in Bart, studying his own brown paper and
tobacco-sack, "has got any more money he wants to--"

Conniston laughed. "Much obliged. I think I'll quit with five
to-night."

Suddenly Jimmie got another of his "hunches." He cast a swift,
apprising glance at Conniston, and then, tugging Bart's sleeve, drew
him to the door. Conniston could hear their voices outside, and,
although he could not catch their words, he knew from the tone that
Jimmie was urging, while Bart demurred. They came back and had another
drink at the bartender's invitation, after which they stepped to the
table and watched the play for five minutes.

"I'd 'a' won twice runnin'," grunted Jimmie. "We ought to make a try."

Bart hesitated, watched another play, and said, shortly: "Go to it.
If you can put it across I'm with you."

Whereupon Jimmie returned to Conniston and made him a proposition. And
ten minutes later, when Conniston went smiling back to the hotel,
Jimmie and Bart were playing again, each with a hundred dollars in
front of him.




CHAPTER III


Roger Hapgood lifted his pale, heavy-lidded eyes from the pages of his
magazine and regarded Conniston with a look from which not all
reproach had yet gone.

"I hope you've been enjoying yourself in this Eden of yours," he said,
sourly.

Conniston sent his hat spinning across the room, to lodge behind the
bed, and laughed.

"You've called the turn, Sobersides! I've been having the time of my
young life. And now all I have to do is sit tight to see--"

"See--what?" drawled Roger.

"I've laid a bet, and it's wedged so and hedged so that I win both
ways!" Greek chuckled gleefully at the memory of it.

"What sort of a bet?"

"Two hundred dollars!"

Hapgood put down his magazine and got to his feet, plainly concerned.
"You don't mean that, Greek?"

"I mean exactly that." Conniston tossed to the bed a small handful of
greenbacks and silver. "This is all that's left to the firm of
Conniston and Hapgood."

With quick, nervous fingers Hapgood swept up the money and counted it.
His eyes showing the uneasiness within him, he turned to the jubilant
Conniston.

"There are just twenty-seven dollars and sixty cents. Are you drunk?"

Conniston giggled, his amusement swelling in pace with Hapgood's
dawning discomfiture.

"I told you I had made a bet. I have laid a wager with the Fates. And
right now, my dear Roger, while we sit comfortably and smoke and wait,
the Fates are deciding things for us!"

Roger paused, regarding him. "Yes, you're drunk. If you are not, is it
asking too much to suggest that you explain?"

"No. I'll explain. At the sign of the local Whisky Barrel there is a
game of faro now in progress. Two very charming young gentlemen, named
Jimmie and Bart, punchers of cattle, whatever that may be, are
deciding things for Roger Hapgood and William Conniston, Junior, of
New York. Each of the amateur gamblers--and they actually do play very
badly, Roger!--has before him a hundred dollars of my money. If they
win to-night I get back two hundred dollars plus half their winnings,
and you and I take the train for San Francisco!"

"If they win. And if they lose?"

"We'll take it as a sign that the Fates have decreed that we're not to
go on to the city by the Golden Gate, but tarry here! Both Jimmie and
Bart are provided with saddle-horses, with chaps--chaps, my dear
Roger, are wide, baggy, shaggy, ill-fitting riding-breeches, made, I
believe, out of goat's hide with the hairy side out!--spurs and
quirts--in short, all the necessary paraphernalia and accoutrements of
a couple of knights of the cattle country. If they lose the two
hundred dollars we win the two outfits! And to-morrow, instead of
riding in a Pullman toward San Francisco, we straddle what they call
a hay-burner for the blue rim of mountains in the south!"

Hapgood stared incredulously, a sort of horror dawning in his pale
little eyes.

"I suppose this is another of your purposeless jokes," he said,
stiffly, after a moment.

"Nothing of the kind! Don't you see we win either way? Frankly, I am
persuaded that the two hundred dollars are now winging their way into
the pockets of an apparently awkward dealer with slow fingers, and
into the pockets of our friend the hotel man. But we will get the
horses, and think of the lark--"

"Lark!" shrilled Hapgood. "A lark--to go wandering off into the
desert--"

"Not wandering! _Pirutin'_ is the word you want, the real vernacular
of the West. Or _skallyhutin'_! I'm strong for the sound of the latter
myself--"

"Oh, rot!" broke in Hapgood. "I was a fool to come out here with a
fool like you."

He turned his back squarely upon Conniston and stood staring out the
little window, biting his thin lips. Conniston stood eying him, and
slowly the smile passed from his face, to be followed by a serious
frown.

"I thought you'd kick in for the sport of it," he said, after a
moment, his voice quiet and a trifle cold. "You don't have to if you
feel like that about it. You still have your ticket to San Francisco.
You can have half of that twenty-seven dollars. You can sell your
horse if we win the brutes."

Hapgood had been thinking about that before Conniston spoke. And his
thoughts had gone further. It would not be long, he told himself
shrewdly, before Conniston Senior softened. And then there would be
much money to help spend, many dinners to help eat, much wine to help
drink, a string of glittering functions to attend. And if he broke
with Greek now--

"See here, Greek," he said, affably, forcing a smile. "What's the use
of this nonsense? Why not slip your father a wire now. He'll come
across. And then we can go on as we had intended and--"

"Nothing doing." For once Conniston was stubborn. "I'm going on with
this thing. If those horses come to us I am going to start early in
the morning for the mountains to see what I can see. You can do as you
please."

Hapgood glanced at him quickly, and, despite the wrath boiling up
within him, the shrewder side of his nature prompted a peaceful
answer.

"Then I'll go with you. You didn't think that I was the sort of a
fellow to go back on you now, did you? We'll see this thing through
together."

Conniston put out his hand impulsively, ashamed of having misjudged
his friend.

Long before midnight Jimmie left the saloon and crept away to the
stable to stroke the soft nose of a restive cow-pony, and to swear
soft, endearing curses of eternal farewell. Not long afterward he had
the satisfaction of seeing his fellow-cowboy steal through the
darkness to whisper good-by to his own horse. And in the early dawn
both Jimmie and Bart stood peering out from behind the corner of the
barn at two figures riding rapidly southward into the morning mists.

That day's ride was a matter never to be forgotten by the two men.
Their muscles were soft from dissipation and long years of idleness.
In particular did Hapgood suffer. He was a slight man to whom nature
had given none of the bigness of body which she had bestowed upon
Conniston. His luxury-loving disposition had made him abjure the
sports which the other at one time and another had enjoyed. He was,
besides, a very poor horseman, while Conniston had ridden a great
deal. To-day his horse--a spirited colt newly broken--was not content
to go straight ahead as Hapgood would have had him, but danced back
and forth across the road, shied at every conceivable opportunity,
threatening constantly to unseat his rider, and jerked at the
restraining, tight-gathered reins until Hapgood's arms ached.

The sun soon drove away the early mists and beat down upon the two men
mercilessly from a blazingly hot sky. Nowhere was there any shade
except the tiny pools of shadow at the roots of the scrub brush. The
heat, the dry air shimmering over the glowing sands, abetted by the
many high-balls of yesterday, soon engendered a scorching thirst, and
as mile after mile of the treeless desert slipped behind they found no
water. Over and over Hapgood was tempted to turn back. He felt that
his shoulders, from which he had removed his coat, were blistering
under the sharp rays of the sun. At every swinging stride his horse
made he felt the skin being rubbed off of his legs where they rubbed
against the saddle leather. His soft hands were cut by the reins, he
was sore from the tips of his fingers to the soles of his feet. But as
each fresh temptation assailed him a glance at Conniston, riding a few
paces ahead, made him pull himself together. For some day the old man
would relent, and then Roger Hapgood would see that for every agonized
mile now he would be amply repaid.

And no water would they find until Indian Creek was thirty miles
behind them unless they turned from their way and rode a couple of
miles to the westward where the straggling stream crawled through the
sand. It was as well that they did not know, for the stream, like many
of its kind in the dry parts of the West, ran for the greater part of
its course underground, showing only here and there in a pool, where,
beneath the sand, there was the hard-pan through which the water could
not seep.

They had left the town behind them at a lope. Now they rode at a walk,
curbing their horses' impatience with tight-drawn reins. They had
thought to have reached the brown hills and shade before the day's
heat was upon them. But now it was already intense, stifling, awaking
from its light doze almost as the sun rolled upward across the low
horizon.

And now the temptation upon Roger Hapgood, urging him to turn
back--back toward the little town, hateful yesterday, but spelling now
at least the courtyard to comfort--was so strong that he would not
have had strength to resist had he not realized that the ride back
would be longer than the ride on to water. He made no answer to
Conniston's sallies, but, sullenly silent, clung to his reins with one
hand, to the horn of his saddle with the other, lifting his head now
and again to gaze with red-rimmed eyes ahead along the dusty, flat
stretch of the desert, for the most part head down, the picture of
misery.

Conniston, feeling the heat riotous in his own veins, feeling the ache
of fatigued muscles, felt a sudden pity for Hapgood. And still, even
through his own discomfort, there laughed always a certain something
in his buoyant nature which saw the humorous in the adventure.

It was late in the forenoon when they saw a clump of green willows,
and ten minutes later came to a roadside spring and watering-trough.
Hapgood threw an aching leg over the horn of his saddle and slipped
stiffly to the ground. Conniston dismounted after him, holding the two
horses' reins as they thrust their dry muzzles deep into the clear
water. Hapgood, applying his mouth to the pipe from which the water
ran into the trough, drank long and thirstily, and then, dragging his
feet heavily, went to the clump of willows and dropped to the ground
in their shade.

"We've done thirty miles, anyway," said Conniston, cheerily, when he,
too, had drunk. "Twenty miles farther to the hills, and--"

Hapgood, his head between his hands, groaned.

"Twenty miles farther and I'll be dead. I couldn't eat any of that
infernal mess last night, and I couldn't eat beefsteak and mashed
potatoes this morning. And I've got pains through me now in a dozen
places. I wish--"

He broke off suddenly. There was little use to tell what he wished: a
cool club-room on Broadway; a deep, soft leather chair; a waiter to
bring him delicate dishes and cool drinks.

For an hour they sat in the shade resting. Then Conniston got to his
feet and threw his reins over his horse's head.

"Come on, Roger," he said, quietly, the unusual gentleness of his tone
showing the pity he felt. "We can't stay here all day."

Hapgood rose wordlessly and walked stiffly to his horse. He cursed it
roundly when it jerked back from him, and for five minutes he strove
to mount. The animal, high strung and restless, was frightened, first
at his lunging gait, then at his loud, angry voice, and jerked away
from him each time that he tried to get his foot into the stirrup. But
at last, with the aid of Conniston, who rode his own horse close to
the other, preventing its turning, Hapgood climbed into the saddle.
And again in silence they pushed on toward the hills.

It took them five hours to do the twenty miles lying between the
watering-trough and the edge of the hills. A large part of the last
ten miles Hapgood did on foot, leading his astonished horse. And often
he stopped to rest, squatting or lying full length on the ground. It
was nearly five o'clock in the afternoon when at last they came to the
second spring by the roadside. And here Hapgood sank down wearily,
muttering colorlessly that he could not and would not go a step
farther. And they were still forty miles to the nearest cabin and bed.

Conniston unsaddled the two horses, watered them, and staked them out
to crop the short, dry grass. And then he stood by the spring, smoking
and frowning at the barren brown hills. They had had nothing to eat
since early morning; they had not thought to bring any lunch with
them. And now if they spent the night here it would be close upon noon
on the next day before they could hope to find food. He looked
covertly at his friend, only to see him sprawled on the ground, his
head laid across his arm.

"Poor old Roger," he muttered to himself. "This is pretty hard lines.
And a night out here on the ground--"

He determined to wait until the cool of the evening and then to
persuade Hapgood to ride with him across the hills. It would be hard,
but it seemed not only best, but almost the only way. So Conniston
filled his pipe, thought longingly of the cigarettes he had left in
his suit-case at the hotel, and, lying down near Hapgood, smoked and
dozed in the warm stillness.

An hour passed. The shadow of the scrub-oak under which they had
thrown themselves was a long blot across the sand. About them
everything was drowsy and sleepy and still. Conniston, turning upon
his side, his pipe dropping dead from between his teeth, saw that
Hapgood was asleep. He lay back, looking upward through the still
branches of the oak, his spirit heavy with the heaviness of nature
about him. And musing idly upon the new scenes his exile had already
brought him, musing on a pair of gray eyes, Conniston himself went to
sleep.

The sun was low down in the western sky, dropping swiftly to the
clear-cut line of the horizon, the air growing misty with the coming
night, the sunset sky glowing gold and flaming crimson, when Conniston
awoke. He sat up rubbing his eyes, at first at a loss to account for
his surroundings. Then he saw Hapgood sprawled at his side and
remembered. And then, too, he saw what it was that had awakened him.

A man in a buckboard drawn by two sweating horses was looking
curiously at him while his horses drank noisily at the trough. He was
an unmistakable son of the West, bronzed and lean and quick-eyed. The
long hair escaping from under his battered gray hat vied with his long
drooping mustache in color, and they both challenged the flaming
crimson of the sunset. Conniston told himself that he had never seen
hair one-half so fiery or eyes approaching the brilliant blueness of
this man's. And he told himself, too, that he had never been gladder
to see a fellow human being. For the horses were headed toward the
hills in the south.

"How are you?" Conniston cried, scrambling to his feet and striding
with heavy feet to the buckboard.

"Howdy, stranger?" answered the red-headed man, his voice strangely
low-toned and gentle.

"My name's Conniston," went on the young man, putting out a hand which
the other took after eying him keenly.

"Real nice name," replied the red-headed man. And dropping Conniston's
hand and turning to his horses, "Hey there, Lady! Quit that blowin'
bubbles an' drink, or I'll pull your ol' head off'n you!"

Lady seemed to have understood, and thrust her nose deeper into the
water. And the new-comer, catching his reins between his knees, took
papers and tobacco from the pocket of a sagging, unbuttoned vest and
made a cigarette. Licking the paper as a final touch, his eyes went to
Hapgood.

"Pardner sick or something?"

"No. Just fagged out. We came all the way from Indian Creek since
morning."

"That's real far, ain't it?" remarked the man in the buckboard, with a
little twitch to the corner of his mouth, but much deep gravity in his
eye. "Which way you goin', stranger?"

"We're going across the hills into the Half Moon country. It's forty
miles farther, they tell me."

"Uh-uh. That's what they call it. An' a darn long forty mile, or I'll
put in with you."

"And," Conniston hurried on, "if you are going--You are going the same
way, aren't you?"

"Sure. I'm goin' right straight to the Half Moon corrals."

"Then would you mind if my friend rode with you? I'll pay whatever is
right."

The other eyed him strangely. "I reckon you're from the East, maybe?
Huh?"

"Yes. From New York."

"Uh-uh. I thought so. Well, stranger, we won't quarrel none over the
payin', an' your frien' can pile in with me."

Conniston turned, murmuring his thanks, to where Hapgood now was
sitting up. And the red-headed man climbed down from his seat and
began to unhitch his horses.

"You needn't git your frien' up jest now in case he ain't finished his
siesta. We won't move on until mornin'."

"Where are you going to sleep?" Hapgood wanted to know.

"I had sorta planned some on sleepin' right here."

"Right here! You don't sleep on the ground?"

The red-headed man, drawing serenely at his cigarette, went about
unharnessing his horses.

"Bein' as how I ain't et for some right smart time," he was saying as
he came back from staking out his horses, "I'm goin' to chaw real
soon. Has you gents et yet?"

They assured him that they had not.

"Then if you've got any chuck you want to warm up you can sling it in
my fryin'-pan." He dragged a soap-box to the tail end of the buckboard
and began taking out several packages.

"We didn't bring anything with us," Conniston told him. "We didn't
think--"

The new-comer dropped his frying-pan, put his two hands on his hips,
and stared at them. "You ain't sayin' you started out for the Half
Moon, which is close on a hundred mile, an' never took nothin' along
to chaw!"

Conniston nodded. The red-headed man stared at them a minute,
scratched his head, removing his hat to do so, and then burst out:

"Which I go on record sayin' folks all the way from Noo York has got
some funny ways of doin' business. Bein' as you've slipped me your
name, frien'ly like, stranger, I don't min' swappin' with you. It's
Pete, an' folks calls me Lonesome Pete, mos'ly. An' you can tell
anybody you see that Lonesome Pete, cow-puncher from the Half Moon,
has made up his min' at las' as how he ain't never goin' any nearer
Noo York than the devil drives him."

He scratched his head again, put on his hat, and reached once more for
his frying-pan.




CHAPTER IV


Lonesome Pete dragged from the buckboard a couple of much-worn quilts,
a careful examination of which hinted that they had once upon a time
been gay and gaudy with brilliant red and green patterns. Now they
were an astonishing congregation of lumps where the cotton had
succeeded in getting itself rolled into balls and of depressions where
the cotton had fled. Light and air had little difficulty in passing
through. Lonesome Pete jerked off the piece of rope which had held
them in a roll and flung them to the ground, directing toward Hapgood
a glance which was an invitation. And Hapgood, the fastidious, lay
down.

The red-headed man dumped a strange mess out of a square pasteboard
box into his frying-pan and set it upon some coals which he had
scraped out of his little fire. There was dried beef in that mess, and
onions and carrots and potatoes, and they had all been cooked up
together, needing only to be warmed over now. The odor of them went
abroad over the land and assailed Hapgood's nostrils. And Hapgood did
not frown, nor yet did he sneer. He lifted himself upon an elbow and
watched with something of real interest in his eyes. And when black
coffee was made in a blacker, spoutless, battered, dirty-looking
coffee-pot Roger Hapgood put out a hand, uninvited, for the tin cup.

Conniston, his appetite being a shade further removed from starvation
than his friend's, divided his interest equally between the meal and
the man preparing it. He found his host an anomaly. In spite of the
fiery coloring of mustache and hair he was one of the meekest-looking
individuals Conniston had ever seen, and certainly the most
soft-spoken. His eyes had a way of losing their brightness as he fell
to staring away into vacancy, his lips working as though he were
repeating a prayer over and over to himself. The growth upon his upper
lip had at first given him the air of a man of thirty, and now when
one looked at him it was certain he could not be a day over twenty.
And about his hips, dragging so low and fitting so loosely that
Conniston had always the uncomfortable sensation that it was going to
slip down about his feet, he wore a cartridge-belt and two heavy
forty-five revolvers. He gave one the feeling of a cherub with a
war-club.

During the scanty meal Lonesome Pete ate noisily and rapidly and spoke
little, contenting himself with short answers to the few questions
which were put to him, for the most part staring away into the
gathering night with an expression of great mildness upon his face.
Finishing some little time before his guests, he rolled a cigarette,
left them to polish out the frying-pan with the last morsels of bread,
and, going back to the buckboard, fumbled a moment in a second
soap-box under the seat. It was growing so dark now that, while they
could see him take two or three articles from his box and thrust them
under his arm, they could not make out what the things were. But in
another moment he had lighted the lantern which had swung under the
buckboard and was squatting cross-legged in the sand, the lantern on
the ground at his side. And then, as he bent low over the things in
his hand, they saw that they were three books and that Lonesome Pete
was applying himself diligently to them.

He opened them all, one after the other, turned many pages, stopping
now and then to bend closer to look at a picture and decipher
painstakingly the legend inscribed under it. Finally, after perhaps
ten minutes of this kind of examination, he laid two of them beside
him, grasped the other firmly with both awkward hands and began to
read. They knew that he was reading, for now and again his droning
voice came to them as he struggled with a word of some difficulty.

Hapgood smoked his last cigarette; Conniston puffed at his pipe. At
the end of ten minutes Lonesome Pete had turned a page, the rustling
of the leaves accompanied by a deep sigh. Then he laid his book, open,
across his knee, made another cigarette, lighted it, and, after a
glance toward Conniston and Hapgood, spoke softly.

"You gents reads, I reckon? Huh?"

"Yes. A little," Conniston told him; while Hapgood, being somewhat
strengthened by his rest and his meal, grunted.

"After a man gets the swing of it, sorta, it ain't always such hard
work?"

"No, it isn't such hard work after a while."

Lonesome Pete nodded slowly and many times.

"It's jest like anything else, ain't it, when you get used to it? Jest
as easy as ropin' a cow brute or ridin' a bronco hoss?"

Conniston told him that he was right.

"But what gits me," Lonesome Pete went on, closing his book and
marking the place with a big thumb, "is knowin' words that comes
stampedin' in on you onexpected like. When a man sees a cow brute or
a hoss or a mule as he ain't never clapped his peepers on he knows the
brute right away. He says, 'That's a Half Moon,' or, 'It's a Bar
Circle,' or 'It's a U Seven.' 'Cause why? 'Cause she's got a bran' as
a man can make out. But these here words"--he shook his head as he
opened his book and peered into it--"they ain't got no bran'. Ain't it
hell, stranger?"

"What's the word, Pete," smiled Conniston.

"She ain't so big an' long as bothers me," Lonesome Pete answered.
"It's jest she's so darn peculiar-lookin'. It soun's like it might be
_izzles_, but what's _izzles_? You spell it i-s-l-e-s. Did you ever
happen to run acrost that there word, stranger?"

Conniston told him what the word was, and Lonesome Pete's softly
breathed curse was eloquent of gratitude, amazement, and a certain
deep admiration that those five letters could spell a little island.

"The nex' line is clean over my head, though," he went on, after a
moment of frowning concentration.

Conniston got to his feet and went to where the reader sat, stooping
to look over his shoulder. The book was "Macbeth." He picked up the
two volumes upon the ground. They were old, much worn, much torn,
their backs long ago lost in some second-hand book-store. One of them
was a copy of Lamb's _Essays_, the other a state series second reader.

"Quite an assortment," was the only thing he could think to say.

Lonesome Pete nodded complacently. "I got 'em off'n ol' Sam Bristow.
You don't happen to know Sam, do you, stranger?"

Conniston shook his head. Lonesome Pete went on to enlighten him.

"Sam Bristow is about the eddicatedest man this side San Francisco, I
reckon. He's got a store over to Rocky Bend. Ever been there?"

Again Conniston shook his head, and again Lonesome Pete explained:

"Rocky Bend is a right smart city, more'n four times as big as Injun
Creek. It's a hundred mile t'other side Injun Creek, makin' it a
hundred an' fifty mile from here. In his store he's got a lot of
books. I went over there to make my buy, an' I don't mind tellin' you,
stranger, I sure hit a bargain. I got them three books an nine more as
is in that box under the seat, makin' an even dozen, an' ol' Sam let
the bunch go for fourteen dollars. I reckon he was short of cash,
huh?"

Since the books at a second-hand store should have been worth about
ninety cents, Conniston made no answer. Instead he picked up the
dog-eared volume of "Macbeth."

"How did you happen to pick out this?" he asked, curiously.

"I knowed the jasper as wrote it."

Conniston gasped. Lonesome Pete evidently taking the gasp as prompted
by a deep awe that he should know a man who wrote books, smiled
broadly and went on:

"Yes, suh. I'm real sure I knowed him. You see, I was workin' a couple
er years ago for the Triangle Bar outfit. Young Jeff Comstock, the ol'
man's son, he used to hang out in the East. An' he had a feller
visitin' him. That feller's name was Bill, an' he was out here to git
the dope so's he could write books about the cattle country. I reckon
his las' name was the same as the Bill as wrote this. I don't know no
other Bills as writes books, do you, stranger?"

Conniston evaded. "Are you sure it's about the cattle country?"

"It sorta sounds like it, an' then it don't. You see it begins in a
desert place. That goes all right. But I ain't sure I git jest what
this here firs' page is drivin' at. It's about three witches, an' they
don't say much as a man can tie to. I jest got to where there's
something about a fight, an' I guess he jest throwed the witches in,
extry. Here it says as they wear chaps. That oughta settle it, huh?"

There was the line, half hidden by Lonesome Pete's horny forefinger.
"_He unseamed him from the nave to the chaps!_" That certainly settled
it as far as Lonesome Pete was concerned. Macbeth was a cattle-king,
and Bill Shakespeare was the young fellow who had visited the Triangle
Bar.

Thoughtfully he put his books away in the box, which he covered with a
sack and which he pushed back under the seat. Then he looked to his
horses, saw that they had plenty of grass within the radius of
tie-rope, and after that came back to where Hapgood lay.

"I reckon you can git along with one of them blankets, stranger. You
two fellers can have it, an' I'll make out with the other."

Hapgood moved and groaned as he put his weight on a sore muscle.

"The ground will be d----d hard with just one blanket," he growled.

Lonesome Pete, his two hands upon his hips, stood looking down at him,
the far-away look stealing back into his eyes.

"I hadn't thought of that. But I reckon I can make one do, all right."

Whereupon without more ado and with the same abstracted gleam in his
eyes he stooped swiftly and jerked one of the quilts out from under
the astonished Hapgood.

The man who had traveled from the Half Moon one hundred and ninety
miles to spend fourteen dollars for a soap-box half full of books was
awake the next morning before sunrise. Conniston and Hapgood didn't
open an eye until he called to them. Then they looked up from their
quilt to see him standing over them pulling thoughtfully at the ends
of his red mustache, his face devoid of expression.

"I'll have some chuck ready in about three minutes," he told them,
quietly. "An' we'll be gittin' a start."

"In the middle of the night!" expostulated Hapgood, his words all but
lost in a yawn.

"I ain't got my clock along this trip, stranger. But I reckon if we
want to git acrost them hills before it gits hot we'll be travelin'
real soon. Leastways," as he turned and went back to squat over the
little fire he had blazing merrily near the watering-trough, "I'm
goin' to dig out in about twenty minutes."

Hapgood, remembering the ride of yesterday, scrambled to his feet even
before Conniston. And the two young men, having washed their faces and
hands at the pipe which discharged its cold stream into the trough,
joined the Half Moon man.

He had already fried bacon, and now was cooking some flapjacks in the
grease which he had carefully saved. The coffee was bubbling away
gaily, sending its aroma far and wide upon the whispering morning
breeze. The skies were still dark, their stars not yet gone from them.
Only the faintest of dim, uncertain lights in the horizon told where
the east was and where before long the sun would roll up above the
floor of the desert. The horses, already hitched to the buckboard,
were vague blots in the darkness about them.

They ate in silence, the two Easterners too tired and sleepy to talk,
Lonesome Pete evidently too abstracted. And when the short meal was
over it was Lonesome Pete who cleaned out the few cooking-utensils and
stored them away in the buckboard while Conniston and Hapgood smoked
their pipes. It was Lonesome Pete who got his two quilts, rolled,
tied, and put them with the box of utensils. And then, making a
cigarette, he climbed to his seat.

"An' now if one of you gents figgers on ridin' along with me--"

"I do!" cried Hapgood, quickly. And he hastened to the buckboard,
taking his seat at the other's side.

"I thought you had a hoss somewheres! An' your saddle?" continued
Lonesome Pete.

"I thought that while you were getting your horses--Didn't you saddle
him?"

For a moment Lonesome Pete made no answer. He drew a deep breath as he
gathered in his reins tightly. And then he spoke very softly.

"Now, ain't I sure a forgetful ol' son of a gun! I did manage to
rec'lec' to make a fire an' git breakfas' an' hitch up my hosses an'
clean up after breakfas' an' put the beddin' in--but would you believe
I clean forgot to saddle up for you!"

He laughed as softly as he had spoken. Hapgood glanced at him quickly,
but the cowboy's face was lost in the black shadow of his low-drawn
hat. Hapgood got down and saddled his own horse, and it was Hapgood
who, riding with Lonesome Pete, led a stubborn animal that jerked back
until both of Hapgood's arms were sore in their sockets. Lonesome
Pete, the forgetful, remembered after an hour or two of quiet
enjoyment to tell the tenderfoot that he could tie the rope to the
buckboard instead of holding it. For the first hour Hapgood was,
consequently, altogether too busy even to try to see the country about
him, and Conniston, riding behind, could make out little in the
darkness. The one thing of which he could be sure was that they were
leaving the floor of the desert behind, that they were climbing a
steep, narrow road which wound ever higher and higher in the hills.
Then finally the day broke, and he could see that they were already
deep in the brown hills which he had seen from Indian Creek. There was
scant vegetation, a few scattered, twisted, dwarfed trees, with
patches of brush in the ravines and hollows. Nowhere water, nowhere a
sprig of green grass. As in the flat land below here, there was only
barrenness and desolation and solitude.

As had been the case yesterday, so now to-day when the sun shot
suddenly into the sky the heat came with it. But already the three
travelers had climbed to the top of the hills where Pocket Pass led
across the uplands and were once more dropping down toward a gray
level floor. On a narrow bit of bench land, where for a space the
country road ran level, lined with ruts, gouged with uncomfortable
frequency into dust-concealed chuck-holes, Lonesome Pete pulled in his
horses and waited for Conniston to ride up to his side.

"In case you've got a sorta interest in the country we're goin' to
drop down in," he said, as he took advantage of the stop to roll a
cigarette, "you might jest take a look from here. This is what they
call Pocket Pass as we jest rode through. An' from this en' you can
see purty much everything as is worth seein' in this country an' a
whole hell of a lot as ain't." He made a wide sweep with his arm,
pointing southward and downward. "That there's where we're headed
for."

"And that's the Half Moon!" Conniston was eager, as he saw at a glance
how the range got its name.

The hills fell away even more abruptly here than they did in the
north, cut so often into straight, stratified brown cliffs of
crumbling dirt that Conniston wondered how and where the road could
find a way out and down into the lower land. They swept away, both
east and west, in a wide curve, roughly resembling a half moon. Toward
the east, perhaps twenty-five miles from where Conniston sat upon his
horse, the distant mountains sent out two far-reaching spurs of
pine-clad ridges between which lay Rattlesnake Valley. Due south, as
Lonesome Pete's outstretched finger indicated, lay the road which they
were to follow and the headquarters of the Half Moon. There again a
thickly timbered spur of the mountains ran down into the plain on each
side of a deeply cleft canon from which Lonesome Pete told them that
Indian Creek issued, and in which were the main corrals and the range
house of the Half Moon.

"Which is sure the finest up-an'-down cow-country I ever see," he
added, by way of rounding off his information. "Bein' well watered by
that same crick, an' havin' good feed both in the Big Flat, as folks
calls that country down below us, an' in the foothills. Rattlesnake
Valley, over yonder, ain't never been good for much exceptin' the
finest breed of serpents an' horn-toads a man ever see outside a
circus or the jimjams. There ain't nothin' as 'll grow there outside
them animals. The ol' man's workin' over there now, tryin' to throw
water on it an' make things grow. The ol' man," he ended, shaking his
head dubiously, "has put acrost some big jobs, but I reckon he's sorta
up against it this trip."

"Reclamation work," nodded Conniston.

"That's what some folks calls it. Others calls it plumb foolishness.
Git up, there, Lady! Stan' aroun', you pinto hoss!"

An hour more of winding in and out, back and forth, along the narrow
grade cut into the sides of the hills, just wide enough for one team
at the time, with here and there a wider place where wagons might meet
and pass, and they were down in the Half Moon country. The cowboy let
his horses out into a swinging trot; Conniston followed just far
enough behind to escape their dust; and the miles slipped swiftly
behind them.

They had crossed the floor of the lower Half Moon and were moving up a
gentle slope leading along the spur of the mountains to the right of
Indian Creek when they met one of the Half Moon cowboys driving a
small band of saddle-horses ahead of him. Lonesome Pete stopped for a
word with him, and Conniston, seeing the road plain ahead, rode on
alone. A mile farther and he had entered the forest of pines through
which the road lay, winding and twisting to avoid the boles of the
larger trees or the big scattered boulders which were many upon the
steepening slope. Now he could seldom see more than a hundred yards in
front of him, and now he had left the stifling heat behind him for the
cool shadows which made a dim twilight of midday.

Two miles of this pleasant shade, fragrant with the spicy balsam of
the forest, and the road began to turn to the left, across the spine
of the ridge and into the deep ravine. Presently he heard the bawling
of the stream somewhere through the undergrowth below him, its gurgle
and clatter making merry music with the swish of the stirring
pine-tops. And suddenly, as he made a sharp turn, he drew in his horse
with a little exclamation of surprise.

Here the road plunged abruptly downward and across the rocky bed of
Indian Creek. Just above the crossing, so near that a passing vehicle
must be sprinkled with the spray of its headlong leaping waters, was a
waterfall flashing in white and crystal down a cliff of black rock ten
feet high. On either side the stately pine-trees, their lowest limbs
forty feet above the ground, marched in patriarchal dignity to the
edge of the stream. And above the waterfall, farther back between the
jaws of the ravine, Conniston could see the red-tiled roofing and
snow-white towers of such a house as he had never dreamed of finding
lost in the Western wilderness.

He rode on down into the stream and across. Upon the other side the
road again ran on into the canon, climbing twenty feet up a gradual
slope. And here upon the top of the bank Conniston again drew in his
reins with a jerk, again surprised at what he saw before him.

Here was a long, wide bench of land which had been carefully leveled.
Through the middle of it ran the creek. Feeding the waterfall was a
dam, its banks steep, its floor, seen through the clear water, white
sand. And it was more than a dam; it was a tiny mountain lake. A
drifting armada of spotlessly white ducks turned their round, yellow
eyes upon the trespasser. Over yonder a wide flight of stone steps
led to the water's edge. And the flat table-land, bordered with a
dense wall of pines and firs, was a great lawn, brilliantly green,
thick strewn with roses and geraniums and a riot of bright-hued
flowers Conniston did not know.

He turned his eyes to the house itself. It was a great, two-storied,
wide-verandaed building, with spacious doors, deep-curtained windows,
a tower rising above the red tiles of the roof at each corner,
everywhere the gleam of white columns. Each tower had its balconies,
and each balcony was guessed more than seen through the green and red
and white of clambering roses.

Midway between the broad front steps and the edge of the little toy
lake was a summer-house grown over with vines, its broad doorway
opening toward Conniston. And sitting within its shade, a book in her
lap, her gray eyes raised gravely to meet his, was the girl he had
seen on the Overland Limited. Conniston rode along a graveled walk
toward her, his hat in his hand.

"Good morning," she said, as he drew in his horse near her. "Won't you
get down?"

"Good morning."

He swung to the ground with no further invitation, his horse's reins
over his arm.

His eyes were as grave as hers, and he was glad, glad that he had
ridden here through the desert.

"You came to see my father?"

Conniston colored slightly. Why had he come? What was he going to do
now that he was here? How should he seek to explain? He hesitated a
moment, and then answered, slowly:

"I am afraid that my reasons for coming at all are too complicated to
be told. You see, we just got off the train in Indian Creek out of
idle curiosity to see what the desert country was like. We're from New
York. And then we rode out toward the hills. One of your father's men
overtook us there, and, as he was coming this way and as we were
anxious to see the cattle-country and--" he broke off, smiling. "You
see, it is hard to make it sound sensible. We just came!"

She looked up at him, a little puzzled frown in her eyes.

"You have friends with you?"

"One friend. He was pretty well tuckered out, and the red-headed
gentleman who calls himself Lonesome Pete is bringing him along in his
buckboard."

"And you have no business at all out here?"

"I _had_ none," he retorted.

"You don't know father?"

"I am sorry that I don't."

"You are going on to Crawfordsville?"

"I don't know where Crawfordsville is. Is it the nearest town?"

"Yes."

"Since I don't see how we can stay here, I suppose we'll go on to
Crawfordsville, then. That would be the best way, wouldn't it?"

"Really," she replied, quietly, "I don't see that I am in a position
to advise. If you haven't any business with my father--"

Then the buckboard drove up, and Greek Conniston devoutly wished that
he had left Roger Hapgood behind. And when he saw the radiant smile
which lightened the girl's gray eyes as they rested upon Lonesome
Pete and took notice of the wide, sweeping flourish with which the
cowboy's hat was lifted to her, he wished that the red-headed student
of Shakespeare was with Hapgood on Broadway.




CHAPTER V


Roger Hapgood, the stiff soreness of yesterday only aggravated by the
cramp which had stolen into his legs during the ride of to-day,
climbed down from the buckboard and limped across the lawn to where
Conniston stood.

"I say, Greek," he was growling, as he trudged forward, "what fool
thing are you going to do next?" He stopped suddenly, in his surprise
forgetting to shut his mouth. The same eyes which had laughed up into
his when she offered him ten cents as a tip were laughing into them
now. He dragged his hat from his head, stammering.

"Miss Crawford--for you are Miss Crawford, aren't you?" began
Conniston.

She nodded.

"I should have introduced myself. I am William Conniston, Junior, son
of William Conniston, Senior, as one might guess. This is my friend,
Mr. Hapgood."

The girl inclined her head very slightly and turned toward Conniston.

"If you have come all the way from the hills this morning," she was
saying, "and if you plan to go on to Crawfordsville, you will want to
rest until the cool of the evening. We have eleven-o'clock luncheon in
summer, and have already eaten. But if you will come in I think that
we can find something. And, anyway, you can rest until evening. If
you are not in a hurry to go right on?"

"We have all the time in the world!" Conniston hastened to assure her.
And Hapgood of the aching muscles added fervently, "If it's more than
a mile to Crawfordsville, I've got to rest awhile!"

"It is something more than that." She rose and moved toward the house.
"Through the short cut straight back into the mountains it's twenty."

Lonesome Pete was turning to drive toward a gap in the encircling
trees when the girl called to him to take Conniston's horse. And then
the three went to the house.

The flight of steps led them to a wide veranda, eloquent of comfort
with its deep wicker rockers and hammocks piled temptingly with
cushions. Then came the wide double doors, and, within, a long,
high-ceilinged room whose appointment in every detail spoke of wealth
and taste and the hand of a lavish spender. And into this background
the slender form of the girl in the close-fitting, becoming gown
entered as harmoniously as it had the other day when clad in khaki and
against a background of limitless desert.

The floor here was of hard wood, polished until it shone dully like a
mirror in a shaded room. No rugs save the two great bear-skins, one
black, the other white; no pictures beyond the one great painting
against the farther wall. There was a fire-place, wide and deep and
rock-bound. And yonder, a dull gleam as of ebony, a grand piano.
Leather chairs, all elegant, soft, luxurious.

She would leave them here, she said, smiling, and see if there was
anything left to eat. And while they marveled at finding the splendid
comfort of Fifth Avenue here on the far rim of the desert, a little
Japanese boy in snowy linen bowed himself in to them and invited them
to follow. They went down a long hallway after his softly pattering
footsteps and were shown into a large airy bath-room, with a glimpse
beyond of a cozy sitting-room.

"You wish prepare for luncheon, honorable sirs," said the boy, his
teeth and eyes shining in one flash. "You find rest-room there. I call
for you. Anything?"

Conniston told him that there was nothing further required, and he
withdrew, stepping backward as from royalty, bowing deeply.

"Here's where I lose about half of the desert I've been carrying
around with me," muttered Hapgood. "The Lord knows when we'll see
another tub!"

Luxury of luxuries! The bath-room was immaculate in white tiling, the
tub shone resplendently white, and there was steaming-hot water!
Conniston, having strolled into the "rest-room," where he found a deep
leather chair with a table close to its elbow decorated simply but
none the less effectively with a decanter of whisky and a silver box
containing cigarettes, leaned back, enjoying himself and the sound of
the splashing in the bath-room.

Once more in familiar and comfortable environment, even Hapgood for
the moment forgot to be miserable, and as he smoked a good cigarette
and watched the water running into the tub now and then hummed a
Broadway air. As for Conniston, his serene good nature under most
circumstances, his greatest asset in the small frays he had had with
the world, was untroubled by a spot.

"How do you like the West, Roger?" he called, banteringly.

"Something like, eh, Greek?" Hapgood laughed back. "Do you know, I
believe I'll stay! And the dame, isn't she some class, eh?"

He finished his bath finally, and at last emerged, half dressed, to
lounge in the big chair while his friend took his plunge. He heard
Conniston singing to the obligato of the running water, and, with eyes
half closed, leaned back and watched his smoke swirl ceilingward.
Presently the bath-room door opened again, and he saw Conniston, his
trousers in his hand, standing in the doorway, grinning as though at
some rare laughter-provoking thought.

"Well, old man," Hapgood smiled back at him, "whence the mirth?"

Conniston chuckled gleefully.

"Another joke, Roger, my boy! I wonder when the Fates are going to
drop us in order to give their undivided attention to some other lucky
mortals? You know that twenty-seven dollars and sixty cents?"

"Well?"

"I've lost it!" Conniston laughed outright as his ready imagination
depicted amusing complications ahead. "Every blamed cent of it!"

"What!" Hapgood was upon his feet, staring. Hapgood's complacency was
a thing of the past.

Conniston nodded, his grin still with him.

"Every cent of it! And here we are the Lord knows how far from home--"

"Have you looked through all your pockets?"

"Every one. And I found--"

"What?"

"A hole," chuckled Conniston. "Just a hole, and nothing more."

Hapgood jerked the trousers from the shaking hand of the man whom
such a catastrophe could move to laughter, and made a hurried search.

"What the devil are we going to do?" he gasped, when there was at last
no doubting the truth.

Conniston shrugged. "I haven't had time to figure out that part of it.
Haven't you any money?"

"About seven dollars," snapped Hapgood. "And a long time that will
keep the two of us. It's up to you, Greek!"

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that you've got to wire your dad for money. There's nothing
left to do. Dang it!" he finished, bitterly, throwing the empty
trousers back to Conniston, "I was a fool to ever come with you."

"You've said that before. But"--his good humor still tickled by his
loss, which he refused to take seriously in spite of the drawn face
staring into his--"I haven't even the money to wire the old gent!"

"Oh, I'll pay for it."

"I didn't want to do it so soon," Conniston hesitated. "But it begins
to look as though--"

"There's nothing to it. You've got to do it! Why, man, do you realize
what a confounded mess you've got us into?"

Conniston went back into the bath-room rather seriously. But a moment
later Hapgood heard him chuckling again.

The Japanese boy came to summon them, and they followed him, once more
clean and feeling respectable, into a cozy little breakfast-room where
their hostess was waiting for them. And over their cold meat, tinned
fruits and vegetables, and fresh milk Conniston told her of their
misfortune. She laughed with him at his account of the winning of the
two horses and seemed disposed to indorse his careless view of the
whole episode rather than Hapgood's pessimistic outlook.

"It's all right, I suppose, since Conniston has a rich father," Roger
admitted, with a sigh.

She regarded him curiously for a moment.

"Some men," she said, quietly, "have been known to go to work and make
money for themselves when they needed it."

Conniston told her of his little friend William, of Indian Creek,
adding, carelessly, "I'm glad I don't have to feel like that."

"You mean that you had rather have money given to you than to feel
that you had earned it yourself?"

"Quite naturally, Miss Crawford. My father is William Conniston,
Senior. Maybe you have heard of him?"

He was proud to be his father's son, to have his own name so
intimately connected with that of a man who was not only a millionaire
many times over, but who was a power in Wall Street and known as such
to the four ends of the earth.

"Yes. I have heard of him. He made his own money, didn't he? In the
West, too."

"Yes. A mining expert in the beginning, I believe, and a mine-owner in
the end. Oh, the governor knows how to make the dollars grow, all
right!"

Again she made no answer. But after a little she said: "If you wish to
wire to your father for money"--and there was just the faintest note
of scorn in her voice--"you needn't wait until you get to
Crawfordsville. We have a telephone, and you can telephone your
message from here."

"Good!" cried Hapgood, eagerly. "Better do that--and right away,
Greek. There's no use losing time."

Conniston thanked her, and a moment later, they rose from the table
and stepped to the telephone, which she showed to him in a little
library. When he got Central in Crawfordsville Miss Crawford told the
girl for him to charge all costs to her father and that Mr. Conniston
would pay here for the service. So she took his message and telephoned
it to the Western Union office.

"You will rush it, will you, please?" asked Conniston.

"Certainly. And the answer? Shall we telephone it out to you?"

"No. We'll be in Crawfordsville, and--Wait a moment." To Miss
Crawford: "We may stay here until evening?"

"Oh, you must. It is too hot now to think of riding."

"Thank you." And then into the receiver: "If you should get an answer
before seven o'clock, please telephone it to me here."

Then the three went out to the front porch. They found chairs in the
shade where a welcome little breeze made for cool comfort. Miss
Crawford sat with the men, answering their questions about that wild
country, chatting with them. And there, at her invitation, they sat
and smoked when she left them and went into the house.

"A charming girl," Hapgood was moved to say enthusiastically. "Really
a charming girl! Who would have thought to find her out here? And say,
Greek"--being confidentially nearer--"her old man must be tremendously
rich, eh? You don't need to think of such things, of course, but take
me--" He paused, and then continued, thoughtfully: "Sooner or later,
old man, it's got to come to one end for Roger Hapgood. And, do you
know, I'm half in love with her already?"

His verbal enthusiasm in no way imparted itself to young Conniston. So
Roger puffed complacently at his cigarette in thoughtful silence,
rather more than usually well pleased with himself.

The late afternoon drew on, and the girl had not returned to them.
Conniston looked at his watch and saw that it was half-past five. They
would have to leave within an hour and a half; they could not impose
longer than that. He was hoping that she would spend at least the last
half-hour with them when he heard the door open and looked up quickly,
thinking she was coming. It was the Japanese boy, bowing and smiling.

"Most honorable sir," looking doubtfully from one of them to the
other, "the telephone would speak with you."

Conniston sprang to his feet. Hapgood smiled his satisfaction. "The
old gent is as prompt as the very deuce, God bless him!"

Conniston hurried after the boy into the house, leaving Hapgood
beaming.

"Mr. Conniston?" the telephone-girl was asking.

"Yes, I'm Conniston. You have the answer?"

"Yes. Shall I read it to you?"

"Please."

"It's rather long," she laughed into the telephone. "But it's paid. It
runs:

     "MY DEAR SON,--Your wire received. Sorry you
     misunderstood me. So that you may make no mistakes in the
     future I shall be more explicit now. I shall not send you
     one single dollar for at least one year from date. If at the
     end of that time you have done something for yourself I may
     help you. I leave for Europe to-morrow to be gone for a year
     on my first vacation. It will do no good for you to
     telegraph again. I cannot help you beyond wishing you luck.
     You are on your own feet. Walk if you can.

     "Yours,

     "WILLIAM CONNISTON, Senior."

Conniston leaned limply against the wall, staring into the telephone.

"Look here!" he cried, after a moment. "There's a mistake somewhere."

"No mistake. The wire was just brought in from the Western Union
office."

"But I don't understand--"

"I'm sorry. Is there anything else?"

"No. That's all."

Even Conniston's sanguine temperament was not proof to the shock of
his father's message. He knew his father too well to hope that he
would change his mind now. His eyes showed a troubled anxiety when he
went slowly back to confront Hapgood.

"Well, what's the good news?" cried Hapgood. And then, when he had
seen Conniston's face, "Gad, man! What's wrong?"

Conniston shook his head as he sank into a chair.

"I--I'm a bit upset," he answered, unsteadily. "I made a mistake;
that's all."

"It wasn't your father?"

"That's the trouble. It was! He refuses to send a dollar. And he's
leaving to-morrow for a year in Europe."

"What!" yelled Hapgood, leaping to his feet in entire forgetfulness of
his sore muscles.

"That's it. And when the old man says he'll do a thing he'll do it."

Hapgood stared at him speechless. And then, his hands driven deep into
his pockets, he began an agitated pacing up and down the porch, his
brows drawn, his eyes squinting as they had the habit of doing when he
was excited.

"What are we going to do?" he demanded, stopping before Conniston.

"I wish that somebody would tell me! We have a couple of horses. You
have seven dollars. Maybe," with a faint, forced smile, "we can ride
back to New York!"

With a disgusted sniff Hapgood left him again to pace restlessly up
and down. And finally, when he again stopped in front of Conniston's
chair, his face was white, his thin lips set bloodlessly.

"I guess there's only one thing left to us. We'll go on into
Crawfordsville and put up for a day or two while we try to raise some
money. Your seven dollars ought to keep us from starving--"

"Will you wire your father again?"

"No. There would be no use. I tell you that when he says he is going
to do a thing that settles it. If I broke both arms and legs now he
wouldn't pay the doctor's bill."

"Then I'll tell you something, my friend!" The pale little eyes were
glowing, malevolently red. "You've played me for a sucker long enough.
You towed me along out into this cursed West of yours, making me think
all the time that when you got ready to call on your father he'd come
through like a flash. And you knew that he had turned you out for
good. Now I am through with you. Get that? I mean it! And if I have
seven dollars I guess I'll need it myself before I get out of this
pickle you've got me into!"

Conniston stared at him incredulously. "Come, now, Roger. You don't
mean--"

"But I do, Mr. William Conniston, fraud! I'm through with you."

Conniston got to his feet, his own face as white as Hapgood's.

"You mean what you are saying?"

"I most certainly and positively do!"

"And the wire I sent to dad--"

"You can pay for it if you want to! You don't get a cent out of me."

Conniston took one stride to him, putting a heavy hand upon Hapgood's
narrow shoulder.

"You infernal little shrimp!" he cried, hoarsely. "If we weren't
guests here I'd take a holy glee in slapping your face! By the Lord,
I've a mind to do it anyhow!"

Hapgood jerked back, his arm lifted to shelter his face. And
Conniston, with a short laugh, dropped his hand to his side. As he did
so he saw Miss Crawford was coming toward them through the yard from
the corner of the house. A middle-aged man, heavy and broad-shouldered
and white-haired, was with her. He turned to meet her.

"Mr. Conniston," she was saying, "this is my father. And, papa, this
is Mr. Hapgood."

Mr. Crawford came up the steps, giving his hand in a hearty grip to
the two men who came forward to meet him, his voice, deep and grave,
assuring them that he was glad that they had stayed over at his home.
His face was stern, grave like his voice, clean-shaven, and handsome
in a way of manly, independent strength.

"Argyl tells me," he said, to Conniston, as they all sat down, "that
you are expecting some money by wire. You are leaving us, then, right
away?"

"I did expect some money," Conniston laughed, his good humor with him
again. "I wired to my father for it. And I just had his answer. There
is nothing doing."

Mr. Crawford lifted his eyebrows. Argyl leaned forward.

"He said," went on Conniston, lightly, "that he would not send me a
dollar. You see, he wants me to do something for myself. And," with a
rueful grin, "I am in debt to you for a dollar to pay for my
message--and I haven't ten cents!"

Mr. Crawford laughed with him. "We won't worry about the dollar just
now, Mr. Conniston. What are you going to do?"

Conniston scratched his head. "I don't know. I--" And then Argyl's
words came back to him, and he surprised himself by saying: "Most men
go to work when they're strapped, don't they? I guess I'll go to
work."

"I don't mean to be too personal, but--are you used to working?"

"I never did a day's work in my life."

"Then what can you do?"

"I don't know. I--you see, I never figured on this. I--I--Do you
happen to know anybody who wants a man?"

A little flicker of a smile shot across Crawford's face.

"We're all looking for men--good men--all the time. I can use a
half-dozen more cow-punchers right now. Do you want to try it?"

Conniston's one glance of the girl's eager face decided him.

"I've always had a curiosity to know what they did when they punched
the poor brutes," he grinned back. "And I can work out that dollar I
owe you too, can't I?"

"You're engaged," returned Mr. Crawford, crisply. "Thirty dollars a
month and found. I'll have one of the boys show you where the
bunk-house is. You'll begin work in the morning."




CHAPTER VI


As the significance of his change of fortunes began slowly to dawn on
him, Conniston was at first merely amused. One of the men employed by
John W. Crawford, a man whom Conniston came to know later as Rawhide
Jones, conducted him at the Old Man's orders to the bunk-house. The
man was lean, tall, sunburned, and the _tout ensemble_ of his
attire--his flapping, soiled vest, his turned-up, dingy-blue overalls,
his torn neck-handkerchief, and, above all, the two-weeks' growth upon
his spare face--gave him an unbelievable air of untidiness. He cast
one slow, measuring glance at the young fellow who Mr. Crawford had
said briefly was to go to work in the morning, and then without a
word, without a further look or waiting to see if he was followed,
slouched on ahead toward the gap in the encircling trees into which
Lonesome Pete had disappeared earlier in the afternoon.

Conniston saw that Argyl Crawford was standing at her father's side
and that she was smiling; he saw that Hapgood was laughing openly. And
then he turned and strode on after his guide, conscious that the blood
was creeping up into his face and at the same time that he could not
"back down."

The graveled road wound through the pines for an eighth of a mile,
leaving the bench land and finding its way into a hollow cleared of
trees. Here was a long, low, rambling building--a stable, no doubt.
At each end of the stable was a stock-corral. And at the edge of the
clearing was another building, long and very low, with one single door
and several little square windows. A stove-pipe protruded from the far
end of this house, and from it rose a thin spiral of smoke.

"The Ol' Man said I was to show you your bunk," Rawhide Jones muttered
under his breath. "You're to have the one as was Benny's. Benny got
kilt some time back."

He flung the door open and entered. Conniston, at his heels, paused a
moment, staring about him. A man in dingy-blue undershirt, the sleeves
rolled back upon forearms remarkable for their knotting, swelling
muscles, was frying great thick steaks upon the top of the stove,
enveloped in the smoke and odor of his own cooking. In the middle of
the room was a long table, covered with worn oil-cloth, set out with
plates and cups of heavy white ware and with black wooden-handled
knives and forks. Running up and down each side of the one
unpartitioned room were narrow bunks, a row close to the floor,
another row three feet higher, arranged roughly like berths on board a
steamer.

Sitting on chairs, or on the edges of the bunks with their legs
a-dangle, their eyes interestedly upon the cook's operations, were
half a dozen men, rough of garb, rough of hands, big, brawny, uncouth.
As Conniston came into the room every pair of eyes left the cook to
examine him swiftly, frankly. He paused a moment for the introduction
Rawhide Jones would make. But Rawhide Jones had no idea of doing
anything more than enough to fulfil his orders. He strode on through
the men until he stopped at one of the upper bunks, about the middle
of the room, from which a worn, soiled red quilt trailed half-way to
the floor.

"This here was Benny's. It's yourn now."

He had turned away, and, standing with his big hands resting upon his
hips, was watching the cook. And Conniston saw that all of the other
men, seemingly forgetful of his entrance, were again doing the same
thing. He felt suddenly a deep lonesomeness, greater a thousand times
than when he had been actually alone under the spell of the desert.
For here there were men about him who, having seen him, turned away,
shutting him out from them, with no one word of greeting, not so much
as a nod. He was not in the habit of being received this way. It was,
his sensitive nature told him, as though he had been examined by them,
had been recognized as an alien, and had had the doors of their
fraternity clicked in his face.

He felt a sudden bitterness, a sudden anger. And with it he felt a
deep contempt for them, for their petty, unenlightened lives, their
coarseness, their blackened hands and unshaved faces. He was a
gentleman and a Conniston! He was the son of William Conniston, of
Wall Street! He told himself that when they came to know who he was,
who his father was, their incivility would change fast enough into
servility.

And still he had as much as he could do to keep the little hurt, the
sting of his reception, from showing in his face. He glanced as
disgustedly as Hapgood could have done into the rude bunk with its
tangled pile of coarse blankets, and turned away from it. For one
fleeting second the temptation was strong upon him to turn his back
upon the lot of them, to stalk proudly to the door, to go to Mr.
Crawford and tell him that he was not used to this sort of thing and
did not intend to try to grow accustomed to it. One thing only
restrained him. He knew that even as he closed the door behind him he
would hear their voices in rude laughter, and Greek Conniston did not
like being laughed at. Instead he left the bunk and walked quietly to
one of the farther chairs. The air of the bunk-house was already thick
with smoke from the stove and from cigarettes and pipes. Conniston
took out his own pipe, filled it, and, sitting back, added his smoke
to the rest.

The cook had turned to say something to Rawhide Jones, and, carelessly
putting his hand behind him, blistered it against the red-hot top of
the stove, whereupon he burst into such a volley of curses as
Conniston had never heard. The words which streamed from the big man's
mouth actually made Conniston shiver. He turned questioning eyes to
the other men in the room. They were again talking to one another, no
man of them seeming to have so much as heard. Rawhide Jones laughed at
the cook's discomfiture and went back to the door, where he washed his
face and hands at a little basin, plastered his wet hair down as his
companions had already done, and dropped into easy conversation with
the heavy, round-shouldered, yellow-haired man sitting across the room
from Conniston.

"Looks like the Ol' Man means real business, huh, Spud?"

Spud answered with a joyous oath that it certainly looked like it.

"He's puttin' Brayley in on this en' an' takin' ol' Bat Truxton clean
off'n it to throw him onto the Rattlesnake," Spud went on. "Bat 'll
have nigh on a hundred men down there workin' overtime before the
week's up, he says. I guess he'll have his paws full without tryin' to
run the cow en', too."

"An' I reckon," continued Jones, thoughtfully, "as how Brayley won't
sleep all the time up here. He's got to swing the whole Half Moon an'
the Lone Dog an' the Five Hills an' the Sunk Hole outfit." He shook
his head and spat before he concluded. "What with the Ol' Man buyin'
the Sunk Hole, an' figgerin' on marketin' in Injun Creek, an' crowdin'
work down in the Rattlesnake, Brayley 'll be some busy if he don't
take on another big bunch of punchers. Huh?"

Spud made no answer, for at this juncture the cook put a big platter
of steak, piled high, upon the table, and the men, dragging their
chairs after them, waited no other invitation "to set in." Conniston
for a moment held back. Then, as he saw that there were several vacant
places, he took up his own chair and sat down at the end of the table
nearest him. The man at his left helped himself to meat by harpooning
the largest piece in sight and dragging it, dripping, over the edge of
the platter and to his own plate. Then he shoved the platter toward
Conniston without looking to see whether or not it arrived at its
proper destination, and gave his undivided attention to the dish of
boiled potatoes which the man upon his left had shoved at him.
Conniston, helping himself slowly, found soon that the potatoes, the
rice, and a tray of biscuits were all lodged at his elbow, waiting to
be ferried on around the end of the table.

For a few moments all conversation died utterly. These men had done a
day's work, a day's work calling upon straining muscles and unslacking
energy, and their hunger was an active thing. They plied their knives
and forks, took great draughts of their hot tea and coffee, with
little attention to aught else. But presently, as their hunger began
to be appeased, they broke into conversation again, talking of a
hundred range matters of which Conniston understood almost nothing. He
drew from the fragments which reached him above the general clatter
the same thing that he had got from the few words which had passed
between Rawhide Jones and Spud. Evidently, the cowboys were pressed
with work both on the Half Moon and on the other ranges, and the new
foreman, Brayley, was putting on more men and sparing no one in
carrying out the orders which came from headquarters. Equally
apparently, the man whom they called Bat Truxton was in command of the
reclamation work in Rattlesnake Valley, and now with a force of a
hundred men was working with an activity even more feverish than
Brayley's.

During the meal five more men came in, and with a word of rough
greeting to their fellows dropped into their chairs and helped
themselves deftly. Conniston recognized one of the men as the
half-breed, Joe, whom he had seen meet Miss Crawford in Indian Creek.
Another was Lonesome Pete. Conniston was more gratified than he knew
when the red-headed reader of "Macbeth" nodded to him and said a quiet
"Howdy." The last man to come in was Brayley.

He was a big man, a trifle shorter than Conniston, but heavier, with
broader shoulders, rounded from years in the saddle, with great, deep
chest, and thick, powerful arms. He lurched lightly as he walked, his
left shoulder thrust forward as though he were constantly about to
fling open a door with its solid impact. He was a man of forty,
perhaps, and as active of foot as a boy. His heavy, belligerent jaw,
the sharp, beady blackness of his eyes, the whole alert, confident air
of him bespoke the born foreman.

Conniston was conscious of the piercing black eyes as they swept the
table and rested on him. He noticed that Brayley alone of the men who
had entered late had no word of greeting for the others, received no
single word from them. And he saw further, wondering vaguely what it
meant, that as the big foreman came in the eyes of all the others went
first to him and then to Conniston.

Brayley stopped a moment at the door, washing his face and hands
swiftly, carelessly, satisfied in rubbing a good part of the evidence
of the day's toil upon the towel hanging upon a nail close at hand.
Three strokes with the community comb, dangling from a bit of string,
and jerking his neck-handkerchief into place, he lurched toward the
table. Five feet away he stopped suddenly, his eyes burning into
Conniston's.

"Who might you be, stranger?" he snapped, his words coming with
unpleasant, almost metallic sharpness.

There fell a sudden silence in the bunk-house. Knives and forks ceased
their clatter while the cowboys turned interested eyes upon the
Easterner.

Conniston caught the unveiled threat in the foreman's tones, saw that
he had come in in the mood of a man ready to find fault, and took an
instinctive disliking for the man he was being paid a dollar a day to
take orders from. He returned Brayley's glance steadily, angered more
at knowing that the blood was again creeping up into his cheeks than
because of the curt question. And, staring at him steadily, he made
no further answer.

"Can't you talk?" cried Brayley, angrily. "Are you deef an' dumb? I
said, who might you be?"

"I heard you," replied Conniston, quietly. And to the man upon his
left, "Will you kindly pass me the bread?"

The man grinned in rare enjoyment, and, since he kept his eyes upon
Brayley's glowering face, it was hardly strange that he handed
Conniston a plate of stewed prunes instead.

"Thank you," Conniston said to him, still ignoring Brayley. "But it
was bread I said."

"An' I said something!" cut in Brayley, his voice crisp and incisive.
"Did you get me?"

"I got you, friend." Conniston put out his hand for the bread and
caught a gleam of sparkling amusement in Lonesome Pete's eyes from
across the table. "And maybe after you tell me who you are I might
answer you."

"Me!" thundered the big man, lurching one step nearer, his under jaw
thrust still farther out. "Me! I'm Brayley, that's who I am! An' I'm
the foreman of this here outfit."

"Thank you, Brayley." Conniston's anger was pounding in his temples,
but he strove to keep it back. "I'm Conniston. I was told to report
here by Mr. Crawford to go to work in the morning. I suppose I report
to you?"

"Conniston are you, huh? All right, Conniston. Now who happened to
tell you to slap yourself down in that there chair, huh?"

"Nobody," returned Conniston, calmly. "I didn't suppose that I was to
stand up and eat."

Lonesome Pete's grin overran his eyes, and the ends of his fiery
mustache curved upward. Two or three men laughed outright. Brayley's
brows twitched into a scowling frown.

"Nobody's askin' you to git funny, little rooster! You git out 'n that
chair an' git out 'n it fas'. _Sabe?_"

Calm-blooded by nature and by long habit, Conniston had mastered the
flood of blood to his brain and grown perfectly cool. Brayley, on the
other hand, had come in in a seething rage from a tussle with a colt
in which his stirrup leather had broken and he had rolled in the dust
of the corral, to the boundless glee of two or three of his men who
had seen it, and now there was nothing to restrain his anger.
Conniston was laughing into his face.

"I hear you," he said, lightly. "My ears are good, and your voice is
not bad by any means. Only I'd really like to know why you want me to
get up. Is it custom here for a new man to remain standing until the
foreman is seated? If I am violating any customs--"

Again Brayley took one lurching step forward. Conniston pushed his
chair back so that his feet were clear of the table leg.

"I say, Brayley"--Lonesome Pete had half risen from his chair and was
speaking softly--"Conniston here didn't know. Nobody put him wise as
how you sat in that particular chair. An'," even more softly, "he's a
frien' of Mr. Crawford."

"Who's askin' you to chip in?" challenged Brayley, his eyes flashing
for the moment from Conniston to Lonesome Pete. "An' if he's a frien'
of Crawford's, why ain't he up to the house instead of down here?
Huh?"

Lonesome Pete shrugged his shoulders and settled back into his chair.

"Slip me a sinker, Rawhide," he said, quietly, to the man next to him
as though he had lost all interest in the conversation.

"Frien' of the Ol' Man's or no frien'," blustered Brayley, his eyes
again on Conniston's, "if you're goin' to work I guess you're goin' to
take orders from me like the rest of the boys. An' the first order is,
_git out'n that there chair!_"

"Look here," Conniston replied, quietly, "I didn't know that I was
taking a seat reserved for you, and I didn't mean any offense. You can
take that as a sort of an apology if you like. But at the same time,
even if I am to take orders from you, I am not going to be bulldozed
by you or anybody like you. If you will ask me decently--"

"Ask you!" bellowed Brayley. "Ask you! By the Lord, I don't _ask_ my
men! I _make_ 'em!"

He had leaped forward with his last word, his two big hands
outstretched with clawing fingers. Before Conniston could spring from
his chair to meet the attack the iron hands were upon his shoulders.
He felt himself being lifted bodily from his seat. His weight was
scarcely less than the irate foreman's, and he employed every pound of
it as he staggered to his feet and flung himself against his burly
antagonist. The men about the table sat still, watching, saying no
word.

Conniston's strength was less than the other's, and he knew it, knew
that his endurance would be nothing against the muscles seasoned by
daily physical work until they were like steel. He knew that in two
minutes of battling struggle he would be like a kitten in the big,
powerful hands. And he was of no mind to have Brayley manhandle him
before such an audience as was now sitting quietly watching,
listening to his panting breaths. In one straining effort he jerked
his right shoulder free, swung his clenched fist back, and drove it
smashing into Brayley's face.

Brayley's head snapped back, and the blood from his cut mouth ran
across his white, bared teeth. Conniston sprang forward to follow up
the blow. But Brayley had caught his balance and was leaping to meet
him, snarling. His hard, toil-blackened fist drove through Conniston's
guard, striking him full upon the jaw. Conniston reeled, and before he
could catch himself a second blow caught him under the ear, and with
outflung arms he pitched backward and fell, striking the back of his
head upon the rough boards of the floor.

For one dizzy moment the world went black for him. And then it went
red, flaming, flaring red, as he heard a man's laugh. An anger the
like of which he had never known in the placid days of his easy life
was upon him, an anger which made him forget all things under the arch
of heaven excepting the one man with bloody fists glaring into his
eyes, an anger blind and hot and primitive. Again he knew that he was
on his feet; again he was rushing at the man who stood waiting for
him.

"Stan' back!" roared Brayley. "I ain't goin' to play with you all
day."

Conniston laughed and did not know that he had done so. He only saw
that Brayley had stepped back a pace, and that he had something, black
but glistening in the pale light, tight clenched in his hand. Crying
out hoarsely, inarticulately, he threw himself forward.

Again Brayley met him, this time the revolver in his hand thrust
before him. It was almost in Conniston's face now. Somebody cried out
sharply. Several of the men jumped from their seats and leaped out
from behind Conniston. Two or three of them slipped under the table to
crawl out on the other side. Then Conniston saw what the something was
in Brayley's hand.

"Shoot, you dirty coward!" he yelled, as he swung his arm out toward
the big six-shooter.

For one moment Brayley seemed to hesitate. And then as the two men
came together the barrel of the gun rose and fell swiftly, striking
Conniston full upon the forehead. His arms dropped like lead; the
dizzy blackness came back upon him, growing blacker, blacker; and he
fell silently, unconsciously.

It was very quiet in the bunk-house when he opened his eyes. A sudden
pain through the temples, a rising nausea, blackness and dizziness
again, made him close them, frowning. He knew that he was lying in his
bunk and that he was very weak. There was a cold, wet towel tied tight
about his forehead.

The table had been cleared away, and the cook was finishing his
dish-washing by the stove. A lantern swinging from the beam which ran
across the middle of the room showed him that all the men were in
their bunks with the exception of two who were playing cribbage at the
table. They were Lonesome Pete and Rawhide Jones. When they saw him
leaning out from his bunk Lonesome Pete put down his cards and came to
him.

"How're they comin', stranger?" he asked, with no great expression in
either eyes or voice.

"Where's Brayley?" demanded Conniston, quickly.

"He ain't here none jest now. No, he ain't exac'ly ran away, nuther.
Brayley ain't the kind as runs away. He was sent for to come to the
Lone Dog, where there's some kind of trouble on. Seein' as that's
thirty mile or worse, the chances is he'll ride mos' all night an'
won't be back for a day or two."

Conniston sank back upon his straw pillow. "What I have to say to him
will keep," he said, quietly.

The red-headed man looked at him curiously. "Brayley's the boss on
this outfit, pardner. What he says goes as she lays. It's sure bad
business buckin' your foreman. If you can't hit it up agreeable like,
you better quit."

For a moment Conniston lay silent, plucking with nervous fingers at
the worn red quilt.

"What did he do to me?" he asked, presently. "Hit me over the head
with a revolver?"

Lonesome Pete nodded.

"That's what you call fair play out in the West?"

"What fooled me, Conniston, is that he didn't drill a couple er holes
through you! He ain't used to bein' so careful an' tender-hearted-like,
Brayley ain't."

"Just because I'm to work under him, does that mean that in the eye of
you men he had a right--"

An uplifted hand stopped him. "When two men has onpleasant words it
ain't up to anybody else to say who's right. Us fellers has jest got
to creep lively out'n the line of bullets an' let the two men most
interested settle that theirselves. Only I don't mind sayin', jest
frien'ly like, as it is considered powerful foolish for a man to
prance skallyhutin' into a mixup as is apt to smash things
considerable onless he's heeled."

"Heeled? You mean--"

Lonesome Pete whipped one of the guns from his sagging belt and laid
it close to Conniston's pillow.

"That when a man's got one of them where he can find it easy he ain't
got to take nothin' off'n nobody! An' one man's jest as good as
another, whether he's foreman or a thirty-dollar puncher! An' bein' as
we got to go to work early in the mornin', I reckon you better roll
over an' hit the hay!"

He turned abruptly and went back to his discarded hand. And Greek
Conniston, the son of William Conniston, of Wall Street, lay back upon
his bunk and thought deeply of many things.




CHAPTER VII


The next day the gates of a new world opened for Greek Conniston. And
it was a world which he liked little enough. The cook, rattling his
pots and pans and stove-lids, woke him long before it was four
o'clock. One by one the men tumbled out, dressed swiftly, washed and
combed their hair at the low bench by the door, and then sat about
smoking or wandered away to the stable to attend to their horses. At
four o'clock the table was set, coffee and biscuits and steaks sending
out their odors to float together upon the morning air. Conniston got
up with the others and washed at the common basin, contenting himself
with running his fingers through his hair rather than to use the one
broken-toothed comb. One or two of the boys said a short "Mornin'" to
him, but the most of them seemed to see him no more than they had when
he had entered the bunk-house last evening. Lonesome Pete nodded to
him and, when they all sat down, indicated a chair at his side for him
to sit in.

There was a great bruise upon his forehead and a cut where the muzzle
of Brayley's gun had struck him, but he was surprised to find that
both dizziness and faintness had passed entirely and that he was
feeling little inconvenience from the blow which last night had
stretched him out unconscious.

He ate with the others in silence, making no reference to Brayley,
noting that they gave no evidence of remembering the trouble of last
night. The f