Desert Conquest, A. M. Chisholm [best reads .TXT] 📗

this place. Well, come over to the hotel, and afterward I'll run you out to the camp."

CHAPTER VI

Sheila McCrae and Beaver Boy and Casey Dunne and Shiner drifted through the golden afternoon just ahead of a dust cloud of their own making. Sheila rode astride, in the manner of a country where side saddles are almost unknown. Her stiff-brimmed pony hat was pushed back because of the heat. Sometimes she rode with it in her hand, careless of the dust which powdered her masses of dark, neatly coiled hair. The action revealed her keen, cleanly cut features, so strongly resembling her brother's. But the resemblance was softened by femininity; for young McCrae's visage was masculine and hawklike, and under excitement fierce, even predatory; while his sister's, apart from sex, was more refined, more thoughtful, with a grave sweetness underlying the firmness.

The two were unusually silent as the horses kicked off mile after mile. Sheila roused herself first, and looked at her companion. Because his hat was pulled low she could see but little of his face save the mouth and chin; but the former was compressed and the latter thrust out at a decidedly aggressive angle.

"A penny for them, Casey!"

"Take 'em free," he returned. "I was wondering whether we had any chance to beat this game, and I can't see it. The bank roll against us is too big. It will get our little pile in the end, just as sure as fate."

"Well, you can't help that, can you?" she commented sharply. "What do you want to do—lie down and quit? You wouldn't do that. Brace up!"

"That's the talk," he acknowledged. "That's what I need now and then. Perhaps I get a pessimistic view when I'm trying for an impartial one."

"What do you think of this Farwell person?"

"Farwell represents the railway in more ways than one. He takes what he wants—if he's strong enough. He's some bully—and so is the railway. But he isn't a bluff—and neither is the railway. He's had experience—plenty of it—and, on a guess, I should say that he is sent down here to take care of any trouble that may start. He is hostile already. You can see it."

"Yes." And after a moment's silence she asked: "What is going to start, Casey?"

"I don't know exactly."

"Of course you know. Dad won't say a word, and Sandy makes wise remarks about girls who try to butt into men's affairs. I'm left out, and it's the first time that has ever happened to me. Nice, isn't it?"

"No, it's confoundedly annoying. All the same, Sheila, they're quite right."

"But why? I'm no silly kid—no chattering, gossipy young lady. I have as much interest in the ranch as Sandy. I know as much about it and the work of it as he does, and I do my share of it. Even Mr. Dunne has occasionally honoured me by asking for my opinion. And now I'm left out like a child. It isn't fair."

"From that angle it looks rather raw," he acknowledged. "Still, it's better that you shouldn't know. In that case you can't be forced to give evidence against your own people and your friends."

She glanced at him, a little startled. "What rot, Casey!"

"Not a bit of it. Anything we can do must be against the law. Suspicion will be directed at us from the outset. You must see that."

"Yes, I see it," she assented thoughtfully. "Very well, I'll be good to the extent of not asking questions. But you can't expect me to be deaf and blind."

"Of course not," he assented and began to talk of the ranch work. She listened, making occasional shrewd comments, offering suggestions which showed that she understood such matters thoroughly.

"Why shouldn't we ride around by Chakchak?" she asked. "I haven't seen it for a month, and there's plenty of day left. And then I can go on to Talapus by myself."

"Trying to shake me?"

"No. But why should you trail along with me? I've ridden all over the country alone. I do it every day."

"Hush, Sheila! Let me tell you a secret. I ride with you because I like to."

"Oh, blarney! That's what it is to have a mick ancestry. I suppose I'll have to own up that if I didn't like you to ride with me I wouldn't let you do it."

Casey grinned. Their mutual liking was genuine and so far unsentimental. They were of the same breed—the breed of the pioneer—and their hearts held the same seldom-voiced but deeply rooted love for the same things; the great, sun-washed spaces winnowed by the clean winds, the rosy dawns, violet dusks and nights when the earth scents hung heavy, almost palpable, clinging to the nostrils, the living things of fur and feather bright of eye and wary of habit. But most of all unconsciously they loved and cherished the feeling of room, of space in which to live and breathe and turn freely.

"The present time being inopportune, and Shiner's temper too uncertain for a further avowal of my sentiments," he said, "I suggest that we turn off here and hit a few high spots for Chakchak. Stir up that slothful cayuse of yours. Maybe there's a lope left in him somewhere. See if you can comb it out with a quirt."

"I like your nerve!" she exclaimed. "Beaver Boy can run the heart out of that old buzzard-head of yours and come in dry-haired. Come on, or take my dust!"

The hoofbeats drummed dull thunder from the brown earth, and the dust cloud behind drew out and lengthened with the speed of their going. Side by side they swept through the silent land, breasting small rises, swooping down slopes, breathing their horses whenever they came to heavier ascents.

Sometimes as they rode knee touched knee. It gave Casey Dunne a strange but comfortable feeling of comradeship. He looked at the woman beside him, appreciating her firm, easy seat in the stock saddle, her management of Beaver Boy, now eager to prove his prowess against the buckskin's. He noted the rich colour lying beneath the tan of the smooth cheeks, the rounded brown throat, the poise of the lithe, pliant body and the watchful tension of the strong arms and shoulders as the big bay fought hard for his head and a brief freedom to use his full strength and speed in one mad heartbreaking burst. But most of all he noted and was attracted by the level, direct, fearless stare beneath the slightly drawn brows into the distances.

A brown girl in a brown land! It came to Casey Dunne, who was imaginative within the strict seclusion of his inner self, that she typified their land, the West, in youth, in fearlessness, in potentialities yet lying fallow, unawakened, in fruitfulness to come. What of the vagrant touch of the woman, the gold of the day, the clean, dry air and the glory of motion, the chord of romance within him vibrated and began to sing.

It invested her momentarily with a new quality, a new personality. She was no longer the Sheila McCrae he had known so well. She was the Spirit of the Land, a part of it—she was Sheila of the West; and her heritage was plain and mountain, gleaming lake and rushing river, its miles numbered by thousands, its acres by millions—a land for a new nation.

How many Sheilas, he wondered—young, strong, clean of blood, straight of limb—had ridden since the beginning of time into the new lands, and borne their part in peopling them. Fifty years before, her prototypes had ridden beside the line of crawling, creaking prairie schooners across the great plains toward the setting sun; little more than fifty years before that they had ridden down through the notches of the blue Alleghenies into the promised land of Kain-tuck-ee, the Dark and Bloody Ground, beside buckskin-clad, deckard-armed frontiersmen. Perhaps, centuries before that, her ancestresses had ridden with burly, skin-clad warriors out of the great forests of northern Europe down to the pleasant weaker south. But surely she was the peer of any of them—this woman riding knee to knee with him, the sloping sun in her clear, brown eyes, and the warm, sweet winds kissing her cheeks!

And so Casey Dunne dreamed as he rode—dreamed as he had not dreamed waking since the days when, a little boy, he had lain on warm sands beside a blue inland sea on summer's afternoons and watched the patched sails of the stone hookers, and the wheeling, gray lake gulls, and heard the water hiss and ripple to the long, white beaches. And, as he dreamed, a part of boyhood's joy in mere life awoke in him again.

Chakchak Ranch came into view. Its cultivated area smaller than that of Talapus, it was nevertheless as scrupulously cared for. The one might have served as model for the other. Here, also, were the straight lines of the ditches, the squares of grain fields beginning to show green, the young orchards, the sleek, contented stock, the corrals, and outbuildings.

But, as became the residence of a bachelor, the ranch-house itself was less pretentious. It was a small bungalow, with wide verandas which increased its apparent size. There Casey lived with Tom McHale, his right-hand man and foreman. The hired men, varying in number constantly, occupied other quarters.

Casey would have helped Sheila to alight, but she swung down, stretching her limbs frankly after the hard ride.

"That's going," she said. "Beaver Boy was a brute to hold; he wanted to race Shiner. He nearly got away from me once. My wrists are actually lame." She drew off her long buckskin gauntlets, flexing her wrists cautiously, straightening her fingers, prolonging the luxury of relaxing the cramped sinews.

"Let us now eat, drink, and be merry," said Casey, "for to-morrow—well, never mind that. But what would you like? Coffee, tea, claret lemonade? Tell me what you want."

"Too hot for tea. I'd like a dust eraser—a cold drink about a yard long."

"Hey, you, Feng!" Casey cried, to a white-aproned, grinning Chinaman, "you catch two ice drink quick—hiyu ice, you savvy! Catch claret wine, catch cracker, catch cake. Missy hiyu dry, hiyu hungry. Get a hustle on you, now!"

Feng, understanding perfectly the curious mixture of pidgin and Chinook, vanished soft-footed. They entered the living room of the bungalow.

"Stretch out and be comfy while he's rustling it," said Casey, indicating a couch. He himself fell into a huge wicker chair, flung his hat carelessly at the table, and reached for a cigar box.

Sheila dropped on the couch with a satisfied sigh, stretching her arms above her head, her hands clasped, every muscle of her relaxing. The comparative coolness, the quiet, the soft cushions were good after a day in the saddle. Down there on the Coldstream the strict proprieties did not trouble them. If any one had suggested to Sheila McCrae that she was imprudent in visiting a bachelor's ranch unchaperoned, she would have been both amazed and indignant. And it would have been unsafe to hint at such a thing to Casey Dunne. Indeed, the desirability of a chaperon never occurred to either of them; which was, after all, the best guarantee of the superfluity of that mark of an advanced civilization.

But in a moment Sheila was on her feet, arranging, straightening. "You're awfully untidy, Casey!" she said.

Indeed her comment was justified. The long table in the centre of the room was a litter of newspapers, magazines, old letters, pipes, and tobacco. Odd tools—a hammer, a file, a wrench, and a brad awl—mingled with them. On top of the medley lay a heavy revolver, with the cylinder swung out and empty, a box of cartridges, a dirty rag, and an oil can. In one corner stood half a dozen rifles and shotguns. From a set of antlers on the wall depended a case of binoculars, a lariat, and a pair of muddy boots. The last roused Sheila's indignation.

"Whatever do you hang up boots in your sitting room for?" she demanded.

"Why, you see," he explained, "they were wet, and I