Read Ebook: The Heart of Cherry McBain: A Novel by Durkin Douglas

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Ebook has 1374 lines and 72387 words, and 28 pages

A little more than an hour later King left the cook-camp and went to the corral where his horse, well rested from the first half of the journey, stood ready and waiting for him.

He was in the act of throwing the saddle onto the horse when he stopped suddenly and listened. From round the corner of the corral came the sound of voices of men in dispute.

"Any man who tries to call Bill McCartney had better be sure he holds a good hand," the most emphatic of the speakers declared.

In affairs of this kind King Howden had a kind of instinct that he invariably trusted. Something told him that the man whose name he heard was the big foreman whom he had seen on the grade before supper. He felt, too, that he himself was under discussion, and laying the saddle down he walked quietly to the corner and listened for a moment. He had no liking for eavesdropping, and yet--he had not recovered from the sting of the words that had fallen from the lips of the girl; the look of reproach in her dark eyes was still vividly before him. But those words were the words of a girl. When men speak disparagingly of another, the case is a different one.

He stepped round the corner of the corral and stood before a half dozen of McBain's men lounging upon bales of pressed hay, smoking after-supper pipes.

For a moment there was a silence so tense that even King, who might have been prepared for it, began to feel uncomfortable.

"No use bluffin'," said one of the group at last. "We were talkin' about you an' Bill McCartney. Looked for a while like someone was in for a lickin' this afternoon."

King looked at the speaker. He was an old man, too old, really, to be combatting the rigors of camp life. His voice was thin, even high-pitched, but King could not help observing the very apparent effort the old man was making to be pleasant. And yet, the line where King's lips met drew straight and tightened perceptibly.

"My boy," the old man went on, very pleasantly but not patronizingly, "don't bother Bill McCartney. We don't love him none--but we talk when he ain't 'round." He was speaking very directly now and had begun to fill his pipe deliberately. "The boys can tell you about him. There's a hardy youngster here in camp by the name of Lush Currie--"

The old man was interrupted suddenly by the laughter of the other members of the group. At first he seemed ready to join in the chorus he had unwittingly provoked, but he glanced once at King and checked himself immediately. Then he turned to the men with a look in which there was a mingling of anger and appeal.

"Well," he said abruptly, "what are you laughin' at?"

If the remark relieved the old man's embarrassment it certainly did not check the hilarity of the men. But when King stepped forward and looked at them with a slow smile playing about the corners of his lips and drawing the lines of his mouth even more tensely, the laughing ceased at once and the men waited in silence for him to speak.

"Don't you go to making plans for me and this man, McCartney," King said, and his steady gaze seemed to take them all in at once as he spoke. "You better get straight on this--McCartney hasn't done me a speck o' harm--not yet he hasn't."

"Pray goddlemighty hard he don't!" replied one of the men, but the remark elicited scarcely more than a smile from the others--and not even so much as a smile from the old man.

"And I'm not going to lose time praying about it, either," King observed, his eyes upon the speaker.

He turned and went back to his horse, where he proceeded in a leisurely way to adjust the saddle. In a few minutes he was ready to leave, and was on the point of getting up when he heard a step approaching, and pausing to look behind him observed the old man coming round the corner of the corral. He was alone, and as he came forward he took his pipe from his mouth and tapped the bowl gently against the palm of his hand to empty it.

"My name's Gabe Smith," he said in his high, thin voice, "an' yours?"

King gave him his name.

The old man extended his hand cordially, and King, recognizing at once that the overtures were meant to be friendly, could not help feeling warmly towards him. They exchanged a few words that served to confirm King's opinion of the sincerity of old Gabe Smith, and then, getting into his saddle, King turned his horse's head down the trail.

Just once before he urged his horse into a gallop he turned and looked behind him.

"Sal, you!" he called to his dog.

At the summons the dog leaped from the side of the trail and the three went off together in the gathering dusk.

It was, perhaps, only natural that King's mind should dwell more or less upon the disturbing element that, during the past few hours, had come unbidden into his life. Early that afternoon his mind had been occupied mainly with memories of a past that had been woven out of failure and disappointment and shapeless motive. Now, with an open trail before him, his mind was filled with new hopes and strange misgivings.

There was probably no fear mingled with that feeling of deference. The men simply knew what Bill McCartney's reputation was, and after the first few searching glances at the new foreman they were prepared to believe what they had been told, and, perhaps, to add something to it by way of coloring it up a little.

Those who were disposed to think conservatively of McCartney's abilities when they first saw him were given an opportunity to correct their estimates somewhere about the third day after his arrival in camp, although only a few were fortunate enough to be on hand when he first proved his ability to live up to his reputation. Before McCartney's arrival the name of "Lush" Currie, a thick-set, bony fellow who had carried off the honors in many a fight to the finish, had always been mentioned with something of the same deference that was now accorded the new foreman. In fact, Currie was one of the few doubters who were unwise enough to have expressed openly their own personal contempt for reputations that were unproved. He spoke once, however, when McCartney was within hearing. The small group who had witnessed the affair afterwards said that "Lush" had spoken very unwisely. No one at the time knew exactly what had occurred--though they worked out all the details with great care later. All agreed that only one blow had been struck, and that blow was McCartney's. Before Currie had a chance to defend himself he was lying in a heap on the ground. Though McCartney waited for him to get up, "Lush" could not find his feet without the help of a couple of men who were standing near, who lifted him and helped him off to his bunk, where for a few days he nursed a broken jaw.

The incident had caused no end of discussion. Some felt that Currie had not been given a square deal--there was such a thing as a fair fight--Currie should have been given some warning. The affair proved nothing so far as Bill McCartney's fighting ability was concerned; it should be fought over again, and undoubtedly would. Others protested that Currie had no right to talk about McCartney unless he wanted to fight--that he should have been prepared for what had happened. He had been warned--he got only what was coming to him, and would probably know better than to seek further trouble.

But "Lush" Currie gave neither promise nor explanation--a fact that, in the opinion of the great majority of Keith McBain's men, proved his wisdom, if it did not add anything to his reputation for courage.

But these were things that King did not know. He only wondered about the man McCartney, in whom he found--though he could not have told why--the embodiment of a new and sinister antagonism. He could not help feeling that somehow powers over which he had no control were dealing the cards, and he had to play the game.

Had it not been for the fact that another--

His mind went back to the laughing eyes of the girl that had spoken to him from the cover of the bushes beside the trail.

Overhead the night-hawks whistled and swooped down with whirring wings above the tree-tops. The damp scent of low mist-filled hollows came to him on the motionless air, mingled with the cool fresh fragrance of the spruce. Little waves of warm air rose from the trail that had lain all day under a burning sky. The occasional call of a distant coyote whined across the plains, and returned in numberless echoes till it broke and died into silence.

Suddenly Sal stopped in the trail and stood looking back, her head up, her ears pricked forward, her tail brushing from side to side. King reined his horse in to a walk and listened. He could hear the rhythmic beat of hoofs on the trail some distance behind him. From the sound they made he knew the rider was coming fast. Curiosity overcame him, and he turned about and waited at a point in the trail from which he could look from cover across a deep hollow to where the trail was visible winding along near the base of the hill. He had been waiting only a few moments when the horse and rider came into view. The light had almost gone by now, but there was still enough left of the long northern summer twilight to make it possible for him to follow the dimly-outlined figures of horse and rider until they suddenly vanished where the trail ran hidden through a stretch of evergreens. When they emerged they were only a few yards away and in full sight. The rider was none other than the girl whose image he had kept before him in the failing twilight.

His first impulse was to turn his horse's head across the trail--he could not believe that the girl he had seen that afternoon was actually in control of the animal she rode. But not more than a dozen paces away the horse planted his feet before him suddenly, stopped with a jerk, and rose on his hind legs. Then with front feet still in the air he pivoted round and bolted away in the opposite direction. King was amazed to see the girl keep her seat, but his amazement increased when, just before reaching the turn, the horse stopped suddenly as he had done before, and wheeling about came up the trail towards him again at the same wild pace. King stood aside this time and caught a glimpse of the girl's face as she shot past him. The expression he saw there was enough to dispel any fears that he might have entertained for her safety. A few yards down the trail the horse turned again, and he saw the girl strike him across the nose with her quirt.

Then for fully ten minutes he watched a battle royal between a slender girl and a horse whose spirit had never been broken. He had seen men breaking horses to the saddle, and he had thrilled to the excitement of it. But this fight was different. The girl who held her seat in the battle that was being fought out before him did her work fearlessly, firmly, and without speaking a word, and King took off his hat and sat watching in silence.

Back and forth they went on the trail, the horse leaping and rearing at the turns, the girl wearing him down gradually with sharp strokes of her quirt across the nose. The horse shook his head at every stroke and came back after each turn with as much apparent determination as ever. The girl kept her place without a smile, her eyes steadily before her, intent on every move.

The end came suddenly. A quick stroke caught the animal just as his front feet were about to leave the ground, and he stood quivering in every limb, champing his bit and shaking his head in an effort to slacken the bridle rein that the girl held firmly in her hand. Then as he stood, trembling and subdued, the girl spoke for the first time, and turning him slowly round brought him down the trail at a walk.

King wanted to cry out in admiration of the superb manner in which the girl had conducted herself in the struggle, but when she came to where he stood she brought her horse to a standstill and turned to him with a smile--and King was dumb.

But here was a woman no man could avoid. In one slow glance again he noted the lightning that played in her dark eyes; he caught the wild witchery of her tumbled hair and the beauty of her cheeks, flushed from the excitement of the fight she had just won, and he lost himself in contemplation of the smile that lent an indescribable sweetness to her firm mouth. She was dressed plainly--even roughly--in a waist that revealed the soft whiteness of her neck and throat and the firm round curve of her shoulders and breast, and in a skirt that clung closely to her limbs. But of these things King Howden was only vaguely conscious. He could not take his eyes from her face, with its strange contradiction of flashing eyes and gently smiling mouth.

The girl was the first to speak.

"You must have been riding hard," she said. "I thought I'd never catch up with you."

"Catch up?" King thought to himself, and was at a loss to understand.

"Come on," she said quickly, and before he was able to reply, "I'm going to ride a little way with you."

She drew her rein back, pulled her horse about, touched him lightly on the flank with her quirt, and was off at an easy canter along the trail, leaving King to follow or not as he pleased. With a slow smile of recognition of the somewhat anomalous position he was in, he turned into the trail and rode after her.

When he came up with her he drew his horse in a little and together they rode for the next half hour through little valleys and over gently rounding hills dimly outlined in the failing twilight.

Here and there a rabbit started up in the trail before them and ran its foolish frightened race ahead of them until the dog came and put it to cover in the low underbrush beside the roadway. Occasionally a partridge or a prairie chicken got up suddenly from its dust bath in the middle of the trail and hurried off with much clucking and beating of the wings. Once a coyote stood with pricked ears before them on the trail until the sight of Sal sent him off with a lazy, half defiant lope to a little knoll, where he perched himself and waited while they rode past. They caught the delicate aroma of dew on the grass, and brushed a warm fragrance from the foliage as they swept close to where the trees leaned a little over the trail. Frequently they splashed through little hurrying streams where the cold water ran only a few inches deep, or rode through low meadows where the mist lay like white shrouds and settled lightly above the long grass that carpeted the hollows. And behind them the sky had deepened to a blood-red hue with long ribbons of pale gold stretching along the horizon already far to the north of where the sun had gone down.

They had rounded the brow of a hill and had come out of cover to a point in the trail where it afforded them a wide outlook across a meadowy valley. The girl brought her horse to a stand and King reined in beside her.

"I like this," she said, waving her hand toward the valley.

King looked at her, but she had not so much as turned her head towards him. For the first time he was able to look at her without embarrassment. He was no artist to analyze the fine points of symmetry in face and figure. But he was a man--and the man in him told him that she was beautiful. What he liked best about her was the strength of her beauty. He knew at a glance that she was not of the delicate, clinging kind that practise a languid air and never forget their sex. Here was a girl whose heart-beat was strong with the confidence and the reliance she had learned to place in herself--and every line of her face, every movement of her body, bore evidence to the fact. And yet, as she sat and looked out over the valley half hidden under the mists, there was a soft warmth in her dark eyes that made her presence luminous. For King the girl who sat before him embodied in tangible form, it seemed, all he had ever aspired to, all he had ever even vaguely dreamed of.

Her voice, when she spoke, was not the voice of reproach that she had used earlier in the afternoon. Now it was soft, quiet, even deep.

"I like it, too," he said, in response to her simple expression of admiration for what lay before them. "But you haven't come all this way for that"--he waved his hand gently in the direction of the valley.

She turned to him quickly. "No--I have seen it before--though I don't remember when it was ever so beautiful."

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