Starr, of the Desert, B. M. Bower [historical books to read txt] 📗

him; gave her an injured glance that was perfectly maddening to Helen May, whose conscience was sufficient punishment, and went slinking off down the slope. Half-way to the band he stopped and sat down on his haunches in the hot sun, as dejected a dog as ever was made to suffer because his mistress was displeased with herself.

Helen May sat there scowling out across the wide spaces, while romance and adventure, and something more, rode steadily nearer, heralded by the small gray cloud. When she was sure that a horseman was coming, she perversely removed herself to another spot where she would not be seen. And there she sat, out of sight from below and thus fancying herself undiscovered, refusing so much as a sly glance around her granite shield.

For if there was anything which Helen May hated more than another it was the possibility of being thought cheaply sentimental, mushy, as the present generation vividly puts it. Also she was trying to break herself of humming that old desert love-song all the while. Vic was beginning to "kid" her unmercifully about it, for one thing. To think that she should sing it without thinking a word about it, just because she happened to see a little dust! She would not look. She would not!

Starr might have passed her by and gone on to the cabin if he had not, through a pair of powerful binoculars, been observing her when she sent Pat off, and when she got up and went over to the other ledge and sat down. Through the glasses he had seen her feet crossed, toes up, just past the nose of the rock, and he could see the spread of her skirt. Luckily, he could not read her mind. He therefore gave a yank at the lead-rope in his hand and addressed a few biting remarks to a white-lashed, blue-eyed pinto trailing reluctantly behind Rabbit; and rode forward with some eagerness toward the ridge.

"'Sleep?" he greeted cheerfully, when he had forced the two horses to scramble up to the shade of the ledge, and had received no attention whatever from the person just beyond. The tan boots were still crossed, and not so much as a toe of them moved to show that the owner heard him. Starr knew that he had made noise enough, so far as that went.

"Why, no, I'm not asleep. What is it?" came crisply, after a perceptible pause.

"It ain't anything at all," Starr retorted, and swung Rabbit into the shade which Helen May had left. He dismounted, sat himself down with his back against a rock, and proceeded to roll a cigarette. By no means would he intrude upon the privacy of a lady, though the quiet, crossed feet and the placid folds of the khaki skirt told him that she was sitting there quietly—pouting about something, most likely, he diagnosed her silence shrewdly. Well, it was early, and so long as he reached a certain point by full dark, he was not neglecting anything. As a matter of fact, he told himself philosophically, he really wanted to kill half a day in a perfectly plausible manner. There was no hurry, no hurry at all.

Pat looked back at him ingratiatingly, and Starr called. Pat came running in long leaps, nearly wagging himself in two because someone he liked was going to be nice to him. Starr petted him and talked to him and pulled his ears and slapped him on the ribs, and Pat in his joy persisted in trying to lick Starr's cheek.

"Quit it! Lay down and be a doormat, then. You've got welcome wrote all over you. And much as I like welcome, I hate to be licked."

Pat lay down, and Starr eyed the tan boot toes. They moved impatiently, but they did not uncross. Starr smiled to himself and proceeded to carry on a one-sided conversation with Pat, and to smoke his cigarette.

"Sick, over there?" he inquired casually after perhaps five minutes; either of them would have sworn it ten or fifteen.

"Why, no," chirped the crisp voice. "Why?"

"Seemed polite to ask, is all," Starr confessed. "I didn't think you was." He finished his smoke in the silence that followed. Then, because he himself owned a perverse streak, he took his binoculars from their case and began to study the low-lying ridge in the distance, in a pocket of which nestled the Medina ranch buildings. He was glad this ridge commanded all but the "draws" and hollows lying transversely between here and Medina's place. It was Medina whom he had been advised by his chief to watch particularly, when Starr had found a means of laying his clues before that astute gentleman. If he could sit within ten feet of Helen May while he kept an eye on that country over there, all the better.

He saw a horseman ride up out of a hollow and disappear almost immediately into another. The man seemed to be coming over in this direction, though Starr could not be sure. He watched for a reappearance of the rider on high ground, but he saw no more of the fellow. So after a little he took down the glasses to scan the country as a whole.

It was then that he glanced toward the other rock and saw that the tan boots had moved out of sight. He believed that he would have heard her if she moved away, and so he kept his eyes turned upon the corner of the rock where her feet had shown a few minutes before.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN A SHOT FROM THE PINNACLE

"Why—did some one come with you, Mr. Starr? I thought you were alone."

Starr turned his head and saw Helen May standing quite close, on the other side of him. She was glancing inquiringly from him to the pinto pony, and she was smiling the least little bit, though her eyes had a shamed, self-conscious look. Starr eyed her keenly, a bit reproachfully, and she blushed.

"I thought maybe you'd come around where I was," she defended herself lamely. "It—seemed cooler there—"

"Yes, I noticed it was pretty cool, from the tone of your voice."

"Well—oh, I was just nursing a grouch, and I couldn't stop all at once," Helen May surrendered suddenly, sitting down beside him and crossing her feet. "I've read in stories how sheepherders go crazy, and I know now just why that is. They see so few people that they don't know how to act when some one does come along. They get so they hate themselves and everybody else. I had just finished abusing poor old Pat till he went off and sulked too."

"I thought probably you and Pat had just had a run-in, the way he acted." Starr went back to scanning that part of the mesa where he had glimpsed the rider. He could not afford to forget business in the pleasure of talking aimless, trivial things with Helen May.

"What are you looking for?"

"Stock," said Starr, falling back on the standard excuse of the range man.

"And what's the idea of two saddle-horses and two saddles and two bridles?" Helen May's voice was as simply curious as a child's.

"The idea is that you're going to ride instead of walk from now on. It's an outfit I got from a fellow that was leaving. He borrowed money from me and left his horse and saddle, for a kind of security. I didn't want it, but he had to leave 'em somewhere. So I thought you might as well keep the horse and use it till he comes back, or something." Starr did very well with this explanation; much better than he had done in explaining Pat. The truth was that he had bought the horse for the express purpose of giving it to Helen May; just as he had bought the dog.

Helen May studied his face while he studied the distant plain. She thought he acted as though he didn't care much whether she kept the horse or not, and for that reason, and because his explanation had sounded like truth, she hesitated over refusing the offer, though she felt that she ought to refuse.

"It ain't right for you to be out here afoot," said Starr, as though he had read her thoughts. "It's bad enough for you to be here at all. What ever possessed you to do such a crazy thing, anyhow?"

"Well, sometimes people can't choose. Dad got the notion first. And then—when he died—Vic and I just went ahead with it."

"Did he know anything about this country? Did he know—what chances you'd be taking?" Starr was trying to choose his words so that they would impress her without alarming her. It angered him to have to worry over the girl's welfare and to keep that worry to himself.

"What chances, for gracious sake? I never saw such a mild, perfectly monotonous life. Why, there are more chances in Los Angeles every time a person goes down town. It's deadly dull here, and it's too lonesome for words, and I hate it. But as for taking chances—" Her voice was frankly contemptuous of the idea.

"Chances of going broke. It takes experience—"

"Oh, as to that, it's partly a matter of health," said Helen May lightly. "I have to live where the climate—"

"You could live in Albuquerque, or some other live town; close to it, anyway. You don't have to stick away down here, where—"

"I don't see as it matters. So long as it isn't Los Angeles, no place appeals to me. And dad had bought the improvements here, so—"

"I'll pay you for the improvements, if that's all," Starr said shortly.

Helen May laughed. "That sounds exactly as though you want to get me out of the country," she challenged.

Starr did not rise to the bait. He took another long look for the horseman, saw not so much as a flurry of dust, and slid the glasses into their case.

"I brought out that carbine I was speaking about. And the shells that go with it. I'm kind of a gun fiend, I guess. I'm always accumulating a lot of shooting irons I never use. I run across a six-shooter and belt, too. Come here, Rabbit!"

Rabbit came, and Starr untied the weapons, smiling boyishly. "You may as well be using 'em; they'll only rust, kicking around in the shack. Buckle this around you. I punched another hole or two, so the belt would come within a mile or so of fitting. You want to wear that every time you go out on the range. The time you leave it home is the very time when you'll see a coyote or something.

"And if you expect to get rich in the goat business, you never want to pass up a coyote. There's a bounty on 'em, for one thing, because they do lots of damage among sheep and goats. And for another," he added impressively, "the rabies that's been epidemic on the Coast is spreading. You've maybe read about it. A rabid coyote would come right at you, and you know the consequences. Or it would bite Pat, and then Pat would tackle you."

"Oh!" Helen May had turned a sickly shade. Her eyes went anxiously over the slope as though she half expected something of the sort to happen then and there.

"That's why," said Starr solemnly, looking down into her face, "I'm kinda worried about you ranging around afoot and without a gun—"

"But nobody else has even mentioned—"

"Everybody else goes prepared, and they're inclined to take chances as a matter of course. I reckon they think you know all about rabies being in the country. This has always been a scrappy kinda place, remember, and folks are used to packing guns and using 'em when the case demands it. You wear this six-gun, lady, and keep your eyes open from now on. I've got another one for Vic; an automatic. Now we'll go down here in the shade and practice shooting. I brought plenty of shells, and I want to learn you how to handle a gun."

Silently she followed him down the slope on the side toward the Basin. He stopped beside the pinto, took it by the bridle-reins and, whipping out his gun, fired it once to test the horse. The pinto twitched its ears at the sound and looked at Starr. Starr laughed.

"I'll learn you to shoot from horseback," he called back to Helen May.
"He's broke to it, I can see now."

"Oh, I wonder if I could! Don't tell Vic, will you?