BY W. H. IRWIN
The first time that Dudley Latimer kissed Belle Sharp, the half-Spanish “help” at the P. L. Ranch, he was not in earnest; he would have been the last to say that there was any serious intention in it. He did it partly in a spirit of pure bravado, and partly because the morning was as warm and white as new milk, and she, smiling back over her shoulder as she emptied her pails, looked a part of it. Equally innocent of any harmful intent, she let him after a formal struggle. He was tall and clean, and as handsome as a young Englishman can be when he is in perfect condition, and has a fine, red coat of tan. Then he bade her good-by. He had been at the ranch a week, ranging the hills in a vain hunt for antelope, already then, in the early eighties, becoming scarce. His canvas-covered wagon and his “side partner,” the Hon. Justin Weymouth, waited by the gate.
The Hon. Justin was taking a parting nip with the “Old Man,” and did not see the diversion, and none of the four noticed that Emilio Gonolez, horse trainer and man-of-all-work, was coming in through the kitchen yard carrying an antelope so freshly killed that its throat was not yet cut. Emilio stood and watched. He saw the struggle, heard the girl cry “The gall of you!” saw her color turn as she lifted her face with unwilling willingness, saw her throw at young Latimer, walking away, a look of admiration that he took for something else. Then Emilio slipped round the barn with his quarry, and came upon the wagon in front. Dudley was smiling across the fence at Belle, who had found business in the front yard. For half a minute, Emilio looked what he felt; then smiled as he slipped into view, and said: “I make-a present you thees antelope. He ees fresh. Myself, I shoot heem. He come ver’ close.”
“Careful how you tie it, Emmy,” said the Old Man. “Dump it in for ’em. Well, boys, stacking in the north field. Good-by, and luck to you.”
While Dudley chatted across the fence with Belle, Emilio was explaining to the Hon. Justin how an antelope should be tied and hung for a journey. “Head down so he bleed—the dust bother ver’ leetle—oh, yes, a lee-tle cut on the throat so he bleed slow. That ees bes’. I cut heem.” A slow, red stream trickled over snowy throat and gray jaws. The wagon drove on. Down the road behind it trailed an irregular line of wet dots, the centres for an army of noisy flies.
“Awfully jolly girl,” said Dudley, as they bowled easily along through the red dust. The Hon. Justin puffed at his pipe, and made no answer. He might have said that he hastened their going just because his companion was very young and the girl very pretty. A flock of sage-hens started from the olive-green brush to one side. Justin pulled up, took out his shotgun and followed, Dudley throwing stones to make them rise. A right and left shot brought down a brace. They gathered up the birds, and turned to the wagon, and as they did so, the elder man looked back. Just level with the ranch house, two miles behind, a cloud of red dust veiled the road and lapped far over its edge. Through the thin atmosphere came a muffled rumble, and then a few dots, followed at an interval by another, heaved out of the mass.
“Cattle!” said Dudley. “That’s jolly. I always wanted to see one of those big droves on the foot. Shall we wait for them to pass?”
“I think not,” said the Hon. Justin. “Not until we get to the next ranch. They say that those wild range cattle do singular things.” But still they stood and watched, fascinated by the shimmering, shifting, red cloud, the distant rumble, the glint of a blazing sun on the sabred heads of a thousand Texas long-horns.
Of a sudden the dust-cloud, which had spilled over the road only to the right, away from the ranch fence, widened out, shifted to the left. They had passed the fence corner, and were on open range. No dust arose on that wing; it was hard prairie, tied close by sagebrush. And inexperienced as were their eyes, the two Englishmen could see some commotion running through the mass; the units composing it were spreading hither and thither; two compound dots, mounted men, were swinging wide about them. The rumble grew louder, lulled, rose again, and above the noise came the sound of a dozen shots, fired in quick succession. Away back in his consciousness, Dudley began to regret that they had chosen, in their young British insolence, to travel without a guide, who might explain to them the strange happenings of this incomprehensible country.
Justin started at the sound of a frightened snort in his ear. He turned to see his horses quivering in every nerve. Almost before he could catch its bridle, the near one was plunging and pitching.
“Get the reins!” yelled Justin; “we’d best be out of here.”
The team broke into a dead run. Looking back, Justin saw the cloud ominously, frightfully near. A struggling advance-guard of long-horns heaved out before, and ahead of them were two men, riding like demons, yet ever beating backward as they rode. Then the red veil fell, and there was nothing but a dust-cloud, rolling on nearer and nearer.
When the Englishmen were gone, Belle looked after their retreating wagon, and sighed. She was just realizing, now that the week was past and these clean, courteous, easy-moving beings of another world were gone, that she had been dreaming dreams. Emilio looked also, sometimes after the wagon, sometimes after the girl. When he bent his gaze on Belle he was serious enough, but when his eye ran down the track of bloody dots, he drew his lips back from his white teeth, and smiled. He was holding the reins of his roan bronco; he dropped them to lean over the fence, and looked up the road, away from the wagon.
“What is it that you see up there?” she asked, carelessly, in Spanish.
“Something that your white-haired friend will be glad to see,” he answered. She looked, saw the dust-cloud coming, saw the little, caking pool of blood, and went white in a moment.
“That,” she cried, “that is what your antelope meant! You knew that cattle were coming this way to-day.”
“A thousand head passing up to the White River country. And wild, very wild.”
“They will trample them; kill them!”
“You thought about that when you kissed him,” he sneered; “the blood goes straight, and the wind is right. He will have a run for it—your lover.”
Then the roar of padding feet was louder, and the herd was coming. They were fifty yards away—and a great, white steer, horned in splendor, lowered his muzzle, and bellowed, and tore the earth, and shot out in advance. Another followed, and still another, each breaking into that rocking run, each one stretching out his nostrils to taste the polluted air. They plunged together over the little pool of blood; they rolled over and over, horns tossing, feet stamping, throats acclaim. The leaders crowded against the corral until its foot-wide posts bent and cracked. A deafening roar, the bellow of a thousand mad cattle, and then nothing but a tangled riot, speeding on down the scent, a thousand great, horned hounds after their quarry.
It was the blood stampede that makes half-wild cattle wholly demons. A clap of lightning, a sudden shot, even the appearance of a dismounted man, will send the mercurial herd rushing in panic fear; but let them once scent blood, and all hell is loosed in them. No pack of wolves follows with the relentless fury of range cattle on the trail of blood. Huddled by the barn, still showing his teeth, but half in fright, at the box of demons that he had opened, the man who laid the trail knew all this. And the girl knew it best of all.
She was between him and his horse as she turned on him.
“You did this—you murderer!”
“I will go,” he said; “I will cut it loose—it will stop the cattle.”
“Yes—you! I will go myself.” He jumped at her as she sprang into his saddle. She saw the movement. His lariat hung at the saddle-horn. She brought it down on his wrist. The same movement started the high-strung little roan, already a-quiver with fear. His heels clattered against the bars; Belle, astride like a man, her calico skirts tucked about her hips, was riding after the red cloud, swinging wide into the sage-brush to pass them.
The roan had a dash of the thoroughbred. He was the swiftest thing coursing that day in the four-cornered race between cattle, cowboys, hunted team, and woman, yet he had two hundred yards the worst of his start. But, like a thoroughbred, he caught the bit and shook out his dapple mane, and laid his belly to the earth as he skimmed. Over sage-brush, over treacherous ant-hills, tangling gopher-holes he sped, the reins loose, for he knew his work. Two cowboys, caught in the press, fighting, swearing, striking brutally at heads and horns as they were borne on, called to her in warning; but the roan rounded the pack, shook himself free, and galloped on.
And then Belle saw what she had feared. Knowing their peril, but ignorant of the cause, the two Englishmen were hurrying on ahead, with the carcass still bumping from the tail-board. The cattle in the road, where the running was freer, had gained upon those on the flanks. They were going in a wedge, with the speed of an express train. The cows, fleeter and fiercer than the males, were leading on. Half a dozen cowboys skirmished before, shooting and lashing out desperately, trying to back-fire by a counter-panic, taking chances of life with every gopher-hole. But there was no checking that mass; when a steer flinched before the heavy whip, he was pushed on from behind. And ever they bellowed, with a note of tigers in their voices.
A moment Belle ran before the herd; then calling to the roan, who understood as only a cow-horse can understand, she cut an oblique course across the herd’s face. She gained the road; the herd was behind her, and the roan, gathering his nerve for a final spurt, made for the wagon. She shouted, but the roar behind drowned her voice, and so she reached for the holster, where Emilio kept his knife. As she whipped it out and drew even, reaching for the carcass, the wagon slackened and stopped. Her own horse swerved in his course, and shot past before she could check him.
The off-horse, what with fear and exhaustion, had stumbled and fallen dead. And the wedge was coming on, now but a quarter of a mile away.
Deadly as was their fear, the two Englishmen, who had jumped to the ground, stood and stared to see her turn in beside the standing horse and, without any ceremony, cut his traces and reins. He reared and plunged; Justin caught his bridle.
“Mount quick!” she shouted. And before he could grasp the situation she had pushed Dudley to her roan, almost thrown him into the saddle, and mounted behind.
As the snorting horses bounded away, the roar was almost on their flanks. It rose to its climax in a great, dull crash. Looking back, the girl saw that they were no longer followed. The dust-cloud was a whirlpool that rolled and tumbled over the spot where the wagon had been. For only a minute; the cowboys closed in, and the panic was over. Slowly the men beat back the sullen, sated demons. And when the press split there was no wagon at all—only broken wheels and scattered bits of woodwork, and flattened belongings and blood—blood and gleaming gray hairs trampled into everything.
The two men dismounted and turned to the girl. Then was she first aware of her skirts tucked about her hips, and of the manner in which she had ridden. Her color rose, and she jumped down. She turned redder a moment later when Dudley Latimer took her in his arms and, for the second time that morning, kissed her.
And that time he kissed her in deadly earnest.