CHAPTER VI
SWINGLEY HAS HIS SAY.
The young Texan’s life during the next few days was in striking contrast with what had gone immediately before. He had a confused recollection of sinking to rest on a comfortable bed, in a room filled with the forms of animals—elk, deer, bears and smaller creatures, all in most lifelike poses. There were even some shaggy buffaloes in a perfect state of preservation. In small glass cases were groups of insects, and there were some giant trout on the wall, evidently taken from near-by lakes, or from the alluring stream which ran close to the cabin.
Bertram’s recovery, under the ministrations of Uncle Billy and Alma Caldwell, was rapid. In a few days he was able to walk about the place. The inflammation left his shoulder and his strength returned to him, as it always returns to healthy youth in the great outdoors.
The old naturalist proved a delight to Bertram, and he was both expert and gentle in applying surgical dressings. Alma accounted for his skill by explaining that he had studied to be a surgeon.
“But he had no real taste for the profession,” said the girl. “What he wanted was to live close to the heart of nature, to study wild life at its source. So he moved here, when the rest of the family came, and, after a few years of ranching, gave up everything else and settled down in this little place in the mountains, determined to follow out his ambition.”
The girl had ridden over to Uncle Billy’s place from the Caldwell ranch, and she was walking about in the bright sunshine, while the Texan stood in front of the naturalist’s cabin.
“Well, I can testify that if Uncle Billy had turned surgeon he would have made a success of his calling,” said Bertram, stretching his arms above his head, in the joy that a strong man feels when convalescent. “He’s fixed me up more quickly than I would have thought possible. Your fighting cousin’s bullet, it seems, just nicked the top of a lung. Luckily it drilled me clean and did not shatter a bone, or I might have been on Uncle Billy’s hospital list a long time.”
“This was the only place to bring you,” said Alma. “The one practicing physician and surgeon in this part of the State lives twenty miles from where you were hurt, and he had taken his rifle and joined the men who were opposing the invaders. I couldn’t have taken you to any ranch house without your presence being known elsewhere, on account of all this excitement. Neighbors are visiting everywhere, and any one who had sheltered a stranger at this time would have come in for general suspicion. But, unless somebody deliberately sets out to trail you, no one will be likely to know you are at this place. It is known that Uncle Billy is opposed to the taking of human life, and that he could not be enlisted in this dispute on either side.”
“Well, Swingley and Tom Hoog will soon be on my trail,” observed the Texan. “I’ll not stay here any longer than I can help, on Uncle Billy’s account. Also on your account,” he added, “as it is not going to do you any particular good to have it known that you helped one of the invaders to safety. People are going to grow more bitter than ever, now that Swingley and Hoog are dominating things in such high-handed fashion.”
“High-handed is a mild term for what they are doing,” replied the girl, her eyes flashing. “They are trying to set up a despotism for the big-cattle interests. After they shot my stepfather and Nate Day, at our little ranch house on the Powderhorn, and had burned the cabin they found the settlers opposing them just the way the farmers opposed the redcoats at Lexington. Things were made so hot for Swingley and his men that they had to fortify themselves in a ranch house, several miles from their objective, the county seat at Wild Horse. They were besieged two days and would have been captured to the last man, if United States soldiers hadn’t intervened. The invaders were taken to Wild Horse under military escort, but it wasn’t ten hours before every one of them was out under bail.”
“There must be bigger men than Swingley mixed up in it,” observed the Texan.
“There are, of course—the biggest cattle interests in the West. But they haven’t shown their hand, and Swingley apparently does just as he pleases. He has headquarters at Wild Horse, with a big bodyguard of fighters, led by Tom Hoog, ready to do his bidding. The rest of the invaders have been scattered among the big-cattle ranches, presumably as cowboys, but really as fighters. It looks as if the trouble had only started.”
The girl’s voice was lowered, but took no new intensity of expression as she continued. “Everybody thought there would be open war in Wild Horse, when my stepfather and Nate Day were buried,” she said. “But the ranchmen made such a showing then that even Swingley seemed to be over-awed for the moment. Wild Horse never was so full of armed men. But the ranchmen were determined that, if there was trouble, they would not be the aggressors. They crowded the little church, where the services were held, and scores of them stood outside. Everybody was heavily armed. When the funeral procession went through the streets, with all those grim, determined-looking men, riding so silent, with their rifles across their saddles, it was terrible!”
The girl bowed her head in her hands. The young Texan wanted to take her in his arms. For first time it came to him, fully and undeniably, that he was in love with this slim, dark-haired young woman whom chance had thrown across his trail. Only the Texan did not call it chance. He wanted to tell the girl that it was Fate that had caused their trails to cross and recross. They had seated themselves on the tiny porch that shaded the front doorway to the cabin. Giant pine trees crowded in friendly fashion about the few acres which the naturalist had cleared. Over the tips of the biggest pines could be seen the white hoods of the mountains. Across the circle of blue sky, that compassed the clearing, drifted masses of white clouds. From the forest came the indistinguishable murmur, that went on always, mingled with the sound of the trout stream, which had first lured Indians and then white men along its course.
“I’ll be going away from these parts in a few days, Miss Caldwell—Alma,” said the Texan. “I reckon I might complicate matters if I stayed here, particularly as I don’t want to bring any trouble on you or your folks, because I was one of Swingley’s crowd. But I don’t want to have you forget me. In fact I just don’t intend to let that happen, because it would be a calamity, as far as I’m concerned. I might as well tell you that I fell in love with you the first time I saw you, and I fell deeper in love in Denver, and, since I’ve been seeing you up here, it’s just been a case of being lost hopelessly.”
The Texan put his hand over the slender fingers that covered the girl’s face. The girl did not draw her hands away, and he drew them down slowly. Her eyes, still wet with tears, were wide and startled. The Texan felt her slender frame tremble. Then her expression changed, and she pushed his hand away, laughing her musical, rippling laughter.
“What suddenness!” she exclaimed. “And yet we Northerners have always felt that you Southerners are rather deliberate in all things.”
The Texan smiled as he rose. Something in that first glance, which she had given him, told him that his cause was not lost.
“Not in love or in war,” he said. “Nobody ever accused us of being deliberate in those things.”
“Well, apparently there’s too much war in the atmosphere around here, just now, for any other sentiment to flourish,” retorted the girl.
“Nothing can supplant real love,” said the Texan. “It’s thrived during centuries of wars. I’ve said my say, and, before I leave this part of the country, I’m coming for my answer.”
“Well, I answer all civil questions and some impertinent ones,” replied Alma. “Maybe I’ll answer yours in the latter category. But, anyway, it’s lucky you’ve put off getting your answer, for here comes Uncle Billy.”
The tall figure of the naturalist could be seen coming across the clearing. He seldom rode, and this habit alone would have condemned him as mildly insane, in a country where men were known to mount their horses rather than walk across a road. But there was not any part of the high hills that the naturalist had not covered in his daily prospecting for whatever treasures the forest might yield. In his later years he cared nothing about killing wild animals. He had secured a mounted specimen of every species of game, even to the final survivors of the wild bison, and now all that interested him was to observe the wild creatures in their haunts.
“Mr. Bertram says he is going to leave us, now that he considers that you have cured him, Uncle Billy,” was the girl’s greeting.
Uncle Billy paused, his face showing keen disappointment. Although his rough clothes hung loosely on his gaunt frame, there was a certain dignity in his movements that never failed to impress. His gray eyes, under their shaggy brows, were kindly, as they turned to the Texan.
“I’m sorry,” said the naturalist. “I had hopes that you could finish writing out those notes for me.”
He alluded to some secretarial work, which Bertram had started during his illness, the transcription and arrangement of valuable, but scattered, notes which the naturalist had made.
“I’ll come back and finish that some day, when all this range trouble is over,” said the Texan. “I think it’s better for me to go before any one finds where I’ve been hidden. It’ll save trouble for those who have befriended me.”
Before the naturalist or the girl could answer, the faint sound of hoofbeats came to the ears of the little group. The sound was irregular and rapid.
“Somebody’s coming fast,” said the Texan. “It’s more than one in the saddle, from the sound. I reckon I’m not going to make my get-away without being seen, after all.”
“Let us hide you,” said the girl.
“It wouldn’t be any use. There’s too much of my truck scattered around, and there is my horse in the corral.”
“You have no weapons with you.”
“No use anyway,” was the mild answer. “I wouldn’t desecrate Uncle Billy’s peaceful abode by doing any shooting here, and I don’t believe any one else will.”
The hoofbeats grew louder, and Alma and the Texan exclaimed in unison, as two horsemen dashed into the clearing: “Swingley and Tom Hoog!”
The leader of the invaders and his lieutenant came at breakneck speed, reining their horses up with a sharp jerk beside the waiting group. Swingley grinned in triumph, as he gazed at the Texan. Hoog, with perpetual malice written on his long, saturnine features, looked on impassively from the saddle.
“Well, we didn’t know what your trail was goin’ to bring us to,” said Swingley, addressing Alma. “We’ve followed it since you left your ranch, but it’s been worth the trip for us. We didn’t have any idea of findin’ our fellow invader, Milt Bertram, here. I s’pose Uncle Billy has been holdin’ you here against your will, ain’t he?” asked the leader sneeringly.
“I didn’t write out my resignation when I quit your outfit at the Powderhorn Crossing,” said Bertram, sitting down on the porch and lighting a cigarette, “but you knew I’d resigned.”
“You hadn’t ought to have done it, boy,” said Swingley. “You ought to have stayed with us. It didn’t seem to pay you to quit us, for it looks as if you’d been havin’ a struggle of it.”
“He was shot in the shoulder when he was brought here,” observed Uncle Billy. “A few more days will find him as good as new.”
Swingley’s face showed genuine astonishment. “Somebody got ahead of Milt Bertram on the draw! Well I’ll be dashed!” he exclaimed. “I wouldn’t have believed anybody could have done that, unless it might be Tom Hoog, here.”
“Or mebbe yourself,” put in Hoog.
“Oh, well, count us as equals,” went on Swingley. “But somebody must have got Milt from ambush.”
“Well, you know a lot about ambushes,” observed Bertram calmly. “Especially about throwing blazing straw from iron ambushes, I might say.”
Bertram was not certain that it had been Swingley who had been behind the go-devil, who had tossed out the burning straw which had set fire to the cabin. His chance shot told, for Swingley’s brows darkened.
“That’s no kind of talk from you, Bertram,” he said. “Remember we count you one of us. If you don’t come with us, some one of these rustlers will shoot you before you get your horse’s nose turned out of this country.”
“You know when and where I quit, and add to that knowledge by telling you why I quit,” pursued the Texan. “It was because I didn’t intend to be a party to a deliberate murder, such as you and those with you committed, there at the Powderhorn Crossing.”
Swingley pursed, and Hoog made a motion to draw, but the leader of the invaders held up a warning hand.
“No shootin’ to-day, Tom,” he said. “This young cub is goin’ to listen to reason. I know what’s the matter with him. He’s fell in with Nick Caldwell’s stepdaughter here, and he wants to throw in with the rustler faction, thinkin’ that that’ll help him along with his love affair. But listen here, young lady, and you, Uncle Billy, who have been harborin’ this youngster. It was Milt Bertram who made it possible for us to burn out Nick Caldwell at the Powderhorn ranch. If it hadn’t been for Milt, here, we wouldn’t have had the go-devil made, the thing that made it possible for us to get right up to the cabin. I believe Nick would have stood us off all day if it hadn’t been for that thing. Do you deny that you made a go-devil for us, Milt?”
Bertram felt that the girl’s questioning eyes were turned upon him, but he made no sign.
“See, he don’t dare say no,” said Swingley, “because he’d know he wasn’t tellin’ the truth. He belonged to us at the start, and he belongs to us now. You know where to find us, Milt, when you’re well enough to ride. And I’m advisin’ you to come right back to the reservation and be a good Indian, if you don’t want trouble. We may want you to make another go-devil for us.” With a laugh Swingley turned his horse and dashed away, Hoog following.
Bertram threw away his cigarette and stood up.
“Why didn’t you tell him it wasn’t true?” asked the girl.
“I didn’t think it was necessary,” said the Texan.
“Then I’m to assume that it was true?”
“I can’t help what folks assume.”
The girl turned away and began gathering up her horse’s trailing reins. “You need never come for that answer,” she said, “and the sooner you go away from here the better.”
“I’ll come for the answer, and it’s going to be a favorable answer, too,” replied the Texan. “Furthermore I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going away, but I’m going to try homesteading on a little land I’ve got picked out, up the creek. I’m going to settle down and be a citizen here, and I want you to treat me like a good neighbor.”
The girl did not answer, but, swinging lightly to the saddle, dashed away from the cabin.
The Texan watched her until she disappeared down the trail that made a short cut to the Caldwell ranch. Then he said: “We’ll have plenty of time to finish the job now. Let’s go in and work some more on those nature notes, Uncle Billy.”