CHAPTER X
STAMFORD'S SURPRISES COMMENCE
Cockney and Mary Aikens returned home to find Morton Stamford established at the ranch. He had enlisted Bean Slade's special interest in an effort to maintain himself in a saddle long enough to sink asleep at night, sore but happy, with the thrill of having ridden a horse. For his use Bean had selected a broncho burdened with the name of Hobbles, "because she acts that way," Bean explained. Not a cowboy on the ranch would bind himself to Hobbles' limited capacities—more correctly, to Hobbles' mild manner of getting about. When Stamford had learned that the horn was not a handle, he discovered, as he thought, unsuspected resources in Hobbles. He confided it to Bean.
"Humph!" replied the cowboy. "Yu can't tell me nothin' about Hobbles' speed. She can cover the ground, but look at the way she does it. No self-respectin' cow-puncher wants to get about in a rocking-chair—an' that's about how much life she has."
So Stamford was content to reserve Hobbles' unconventionalities for himself, convinced that under his developing horsemanship Hobbles and he might yet be able to face a ten-mile ride without quailing.
His reception by his host and hostess was bewildering in its fluctuations. At first Mary welcomed him with enthusiasm that was almost pathetic. Cockney closed his lips and went about the chores in the house necessary after a protracted absence.
"I guess the Provincial meals got too much for me," Stamford explained. "My doctor prescribed rest, exercise, no worry. It's the cheapest treatment I ever took. I remembered your invitation, Mrs. Aikens."
Cockney examined his wife with raised brows.
"Or rather," Stamford hastened to correct, "the invitation I twisted your words into that day at Dunmore Junction. Already I feel rewarded, not only in a new vigour that has made me almost reckless——"
"Don't let your recklessness run away with you." advised Cockney quietly, pausing in his efforts to blow the kitchen fire into a flame.
"Already," continued Stamford, "I can ride—ride. At least, to-day I stuck to Hobbles for ten minutes, and almost chose my spot to fall on. Only I didn't see the cactus. If you don't mind, I'll eat off the piano to-night."
"I can assure you, Mr. Stamford," said Mrs. Aikens, "that the H-Lazy Z will be your debtor as long as you can stay. Jim will say the same."
But Jim did not say the same—at least not then. Though Bean Slade and the cook had arrived from the cook-house, Cockney bore the brunt of the kitchen fire. He remained bent over it, blowing and watching, until the flame burned bright.
"There isn't a ranch in the country closed to strangers at any time," he said, slowly rising from his knees and bending to brush them off.
A sensible embarrassment filled the room. Stamford felt the chill of it, but the look he surprised on Mary Aikens' face prompted him to ignore it.
"Of course there's danger of a tenderfoot out-Westing the West when he gets started," he said lightly.
"Don't worry," said Cockney, more genially. "We'll hold you to the conventions."
Stamford was indignant inwardly. Though he had made himself Cockney's guest to prove his faith in his host justified, he felt a twinge of shame at accepting such lukewarm hospitality.
"You know, Mary, I thought I noticed a difference in the last issue of the Journal." Cockney's spirits were unaccountably rising. "It seemed newsier, better written."
"I suppose," said Stamford, "like an old employer of mine, you consider editors necessary evils to justify the existence of the advertising man. Smith will get along all right with the Journal. I figured that an anæmic paper for a few weeks is better than a dead editor for a long time—at least from my point of view. In my efforts to uplift Western journalism I seem to have pitted a puny constitution against a vigorous tradition that all stomachs look alike to the Provincial. This little body was beginning to buck."
Mary Aikens had brought from town another visitor, a small fox-terrier that Cockney had picked up somewhere, he did not remember where. He only knew that when he woke one morning he was forty-seven dollars out and a fox-terrier in. Mary was delighted. It surprised her that she had not thought of it before. Cockney was less enthusiastic. He was oppressed with sundry misgivings of the manner in which he had come by the dog, and out there on the Red Deer was no place for a miserable little creature no decent coyote would make two bites of.
Imp had accepted the ranch from the moment of his arrival as his own special possession, and its occupants as created for his exclusive amusement. He was as keenly interested in the rousing of the kitchen fire as was Cockney, considered Bean Slade a rather boring plaything, favoured Stamford with a tentative sniff, but for his mistress had a deep though undemonstrative affection.
Dakota Fraley lounged over from the bunk-house and stood in the front doorway, tapping on the frame to attract attention.
"Here's something you'll be interested in, Dakota," called Mrs. Aikens. "I managed to get a couple of Montana papers for you. Why, look at Imp!"
Imp, christened more in hope than descriptively, was crawling to Dakota's feet, head outstretched, tail invisible.
Dakota smiled. "They all do it. Never seen the dog yet didn't get on his belly to me. Here! Up you get! Better go back to your missus; she's jealous."
The dog raised himself obediently, but with cringing body, and slunk back to Mrs. Aikens, where he seated himself sideways in the shadow of her skirts, watching Dakota.
"Just came to tell you, Mr. Aikens, that I'd best get Pink Eye out of harness instanter or he'll get himself out, and mess up the ranch in doing it."
Stamford remembered then that, in the fever of his new ranch life, he had forgotten to shave that day. He excused himself and retired to his room, which adjoined the sitting-room on the ground floor. Cockney went with Dakota to the front door.
"Thanks, Dakota!" he was saying. "Pink Eye's going to make a driver all right. I may use him a lot. He's got——"
The rest of the sentence was drowned in the closing of the door, but more of their conversation came to Stamford through the open window.
"Get those cattle, Dakota?"
Dakota shouted to Pink Eye before replying:
"Found a dozen or so."
"Far away?"
"Down toward the railway—east."
The cowboy busied himself pulling Pink Eye to an even keel.
"Funny thing happened," he said. "Spooky rider got through the night-hawks the first night and pretty near stampeded the bunch. General got a shot at him—a big fellow, the boys say, riding a devil of a broncho—but we couldn't find any trace of him when it got light.... We found some tracks though," he added slowly.
There was an appreciable period of silence before Dakota went on: "I got my eye peeled for him. He'll be bucking better shooting eyes than General's next time."
The whip cracked and the buggy rattled off to the stables. Stamford, peeping through the window, his cheeks in a lather, saw Cockney look after the retreating team a moment, then strike away to the stables.
Shaved and freshly clad in a white tennis shirt, Stamford emerged from his room and found Mary Aikens superintending the preparations for the night meal. Bean Slade was peeling potatoes, a big grin on his blushing face, and a large blue apron before him that Mary had insisted on tying under his chin. The cook from the ranch cook-house was mixing something on the table, while the mistress was diving into cupboards and shelves with the stores she had brought from town.
She hastened to meet Stamford in the sitting-room, a strange constraint in her manner. While she nervously set about laying the table, he occupied himself with Imp. He wondered what she had to say to him that required so much courage.
"I'm afraid you'll find time hang heavily on your hands here."
She was leaning across to straighten a corner of the tablecloth, and he could not see her face.
"I'm not afraid of that," he replied, giving Imp a poke.
"We've—we've never had visitors before." A flush stole softly into her cheeks. "You've selected the last ranch to suit your purpose—though it's healthy enough, I suppose. The Double Bar-O now—there are young people there. And the Circle-Arrow further east."
Apparently he was busy poking Imp's fat sides, but beneath his brows he glanced at her again and again as she spoke. For some sudden reason she did not wish him to stay. That suspicion determined his course.
"In five days," he declared, "there have been no premonitory twinges of lonesomeness. And if, with only three of us on the ranch for three days——"
"Only three? What do you mean?"
"Bean Slade, cookie, and I—that was all."
"Weren't—— Where were Dakota and the others?"
"Down south somewhere—Irvine way, I think they said, in search of strays."
"O-oh!"
She stopped on her way to the kitchen and turned into her bedroom.
Stamford became suddenly aware of Bean Slade's lanky, blue-aproned figure lolling in the kitchen doorway.
"Yer shure lucky," said Bean, "gettin' the missus to cook yer meals, 'stead o' cookie. Mebbe we'll miss yu—fer the meals. Not to say cookie here ain't a real shuff when he likes, but he don't like nowhar 'ceptin' here at the ranch-house. Look at that, now!" He turned to watch the cook relentlessly pursue a stray fly that had managed to squirm through the screen door at the back, where a great number of its fellows, attracted by the odour and heat, were jealously prying about for entrance. "One measly li'l insec' gi's him the pip here; out at the cook-house he can sarve flies twenty-seven different ways without overlappin'. But lookee here, Mr. Stamford"—he leaned into the room and spoke in a whisper—"don't yu go fer to tell all yu heard us croakin' out there. The boss mightn't like it."
Stamford felt a glow of elation that Bean, in his innocence, had furnished him with a clue, but before he could follow it up, Mary Aikens came thoughtfully back and went about her work. Bean slunk back into the kitchen and nosed about for his own special fly.
Mary was in the act of reaching to a cupboard, when her hand stopped and she turned to the window. An exciting sense of nervousness and unrest about the ranch made Stamford's heart leap. He moved restlessly in his chair.
"Listen!"
The dull thud of hoofs and the rattle of wheels drew them both to the door. A buckboard was coming drunkenly down the eastern trail, its horses, under the direction of an inexpert—or drunken—driver, uncertain of what was expected of them. The smallest deviation from the beaten track meant that one horse was mounting the ridge and the other the prairie at the side, the wheels following them in jerks from the deep ruts in the black loam worn by the unanimous track of every previous vehicle and horse.