The Range Dwellers by B. M. Bower (best mystery novels of all time .txt) 📖

"Why do you spend every summer out here in the wilderness?" I asked, feeling certain that nothing but speech could save me from going hopelessly silly.

She turned her eyes calmly toward me, and—their power had not weakened, at all events. I felt as if I had taken hold of a battery with all the current turned on.

"Why, I suppose I like it here in summer. You're here, yourself; don't you like it?"

I wanted to say something smart, there, and I have thought of a dozen bright remarks since; but at the time I couldn't think of a blessed thing that came within a mile of being either witty or epigrammatic. Love-making was all new to me, and I saw right then that I wasn't going to shine. I finally did remark that I should like it better if her father would be less belligerent and more peaceful as a neighbor.

"You told me, last summer, that you enjoyed keeping up the feud," she reminded, smiling whimsically down at me.

She made a wrong play there; she let me see that she did remember some things that I said. It boosted my courage a notch.

"But that was last summer," I countered. "One can change one's view-point a lot in twelve months. Anyway, you knew all along that I didn't mean a word of it."

"Indeed!" It was evident that she didn't quite like having me take that tone.

"Yes, 'indeed'!" I repeated, feeling a rebellion against circumstances and at convention growing stronger within me. Why couldn't I put her on my horse and carry her off and keep her always? I wondered crazily. That was what I wanted to do.

"Do you ever mean what you say, I wonder?" she mused, biting her pencil-point like a schoolgirl when she can't remember how many times three goes into twenty-seven.

"Sometimes. Sometimes I mean more." I set my teeth, closed my eyes—mentally—and plunged, insanely, not knowing whether I should come to the surface alive or knock my head on a rock and stay down. "For instance, when I say that some day I shall carry you off and find a preacher to marry us, and that we shall live happily ever after, whether you want to or not, because I shall make you, I mean every word of it—and a lot more."

That was going some, I fancy! I was so scared at myself I didn't dare breathe. I kept my eyes fixed desperately on the mouth of the pass, all golden-green in the sunshine; and I remember that my teeth were so tight together that they ached afterward.

The point of her pencil came off with a snap. I heard it, but I was afraid to look. "Do you? How very odd!" Her voice sounded queer, as if it had been squeezed dry of every sort of emotion. "And—Edith?"

I looked at her then, fast enough. "Edith?" I stared at her stupidly. "What the—what's Edith got to do with it?"

"Possibly nothing"—in the same squeezed tone. "Men are so—er—irresponsible; and you say you don't always mean—Still, when a man writes pages and pages to a girl every week for nearly a year, one naturally supposes—"

"Oh, look here!" I was getting desperate enough to be a bit rough with her. "Edith doesn't care a rap about me, and you know it. And she knows I don't care, and—and if anybody had anything to say, it would be your Mr. Terence Weaver."

"My Mr. Terence Weaver?" She was looking down at me sidewise, in a perfectly maddening way. "You are really very—er—funny, Mr. Carleton."

"Well," I rapped out between my teeth, "I don't feel funny. I feel—"

"No? But, really, you know, you act that way."

I saw she was getting all the best of it—and, in my opinion, that would kill what little chance a man might have with a girl. I set deliberately about breaking through that crust of composure, if I did nothing more.

"That depends on the view-point," I grinned. "Would you think it funny if I carried you off—really, you know—and—er—married you and made you live happy—"

"You seem to insist upon the happy part of it, which is not at all—"

"Necessary?" I hinted.

"Plausible," she supplied sweetly.

"But would you think it funny, if I did?"

She regarded her broken pencil ruefully—or pretended to—and pinched her brows together in deep meditation. Oh, she was the most maddening bit of young womanhood—But, there, no Barney for me.

"I—might," she decided at last. "It would be rather droll, you know, and I wonder how you'd manage it; I'm not very tiny, and I rather think it wouldn't be easy to—er—carry me off. Would you wear a mask—a black velvet mask? I should insist upon black velvet. And would you say: 'Gadzooks, madam! I command you not to scream!' Would you?" She leaned toward me, and her eyes—well, for downright torture, women are at times perfectly fiendish.

I caught her hand, and I held it, too, in spite of her. That far I was master.

"No," I told her grimly. "If I saw that you were going to do anything so foolish as to scream, I should just kiss you, and—kiss you till you were glad to be sensible about it."

Well, she tried first to look calmly amused; then she tried to look insulted, and to freeze me into sanity. She ended, however, by looking a good bit confused, and by blushing scarlet. I had won that far. I kept her hand held tight in mine; I could feel it squirm to get away, and it felt—oh, thunder!

"Let's play something else," she said, after a long minute. "I—I never did admire highwaymen particularly, and I must go home."

"No, you mustn't," I contradicted. "You must—"

She looked at me with those wonderful, heavy-lashed eyes, and her lips had a little quiver as if—Oh, I don't know, but I let go her hand, and I felt like a great, hulking brute that had been teasing a child till it cried.

"All right," I sighed, "I'll let you go this time. But I warn you, little girl. If—no, when I find you out from King's Highway by yourself again, that kidnaping is sure going to come off. The Lord intended you to be Mrs. Ellis Carleton. And forty feuds and forty fathers can't prevent it. I don't believe in going against the decrees of Providence; a wise Providence."

She bit her lip at the corner. "You must have a little private Providence of your own," she retorted, with something like her old assurance. "I'm sure mine never hinted at such a—a fate for me. And one feud is as good as forty, Mr. Carleton. If you are anything like your father, I can easily understand how the feud began. The Kings and the Carletons are fond of their own way."

"Thy way shall be my way," I promised rashly, just because it sounded smart.

"Thank you. Then there will be no melodramatic abductions in the shadow of White Divide," she laughed triumphantly, "and I shall escape a most horrible fate!" She went, still laughing, down to where her horse was waiting.

I followed—rather, I kept pace with her. "All the same, I dare you to ride out alone from King's Highway again," I defied. "For, if you do, and I find you—"

"Good-by, Mr. Carleton. You'd be splendid in vaudeville," she mocked from her saddle, where she had got with all the ease of a cowboy, without any help from me. "Black velvet mask and gadzooks, madam—I must certainly tell Edith. It will amuse her, I'm sure."

"No, you won't tell Edith," I flung after her, but I don't know if she heard.

She rode away down the steep slope, the roan leaning back stiffly against the incline, and I stood watching her like a fool. I didn't think it would be good policy to follow her. I tried to roll a cigarette—in case she might look back to see how I was taking her last shot. But she didn't, and I threw the thing away half-made. It was a case where smoke wouldn't help me.

If I hadn't made my chance any better, I knew I couldn't very well make it worse; but there was mighty little comfort in that reflection. And what a bluff I had put up! Carry her off and marry her? Lord knows I wanted to, badly enough! But—

On the way back to the ranch I overtook Frosty mooning along at a walk, with his shoulders humped in the way a man has when he's thinking pretty hard. I had left Frosty with the round-up, and I was pretty much surprised to see him here. I didn't feel in the mood for conversation, even with him; but, to be decent, I spurred up alongside and said hello, and where had he come from? There was nothing in that for a man to get uppish about, but he turned and actually glared at me.

"I might be an inquisitive son-of-a-gun and ask you the same thing," he growled.

"Yes, you might," I agreed. "But, if you did, I'd be apt to tell you to depart immediately for a place called Gehenna—which is polite for hell."

"Well, same here," he retorted laconically; and that ended our conversation, though we rode stirrup to stirrup for eight miles.

I can't say that, after the first shock of surprise, I gave much time to wondering what brought Frosty home. I took it he had had a row with the wagon-boss. Frosty is an independent sort and won't stand a word from anybody, and the wagon-boss is something of a bully. The gait they were traveling, out there with the wagons, was fraying the nerves of the whole bunch before I left. And that was all I thought about Frosty.

I had troubles of my own, about that time. I had put up my bluff, and I kept wondering what I should do if Beryl King called me. There wasn't much chance that she would, of course; but, still, she wasn't that kind of girl who always does the conventional thing and the expected thing, and I had seen a gleam in her eyes that, in a man's, I should call deviltry, pure and simple. If I should meet her out somewhere, and she even looked a dare—I'll confess one thing: for a whole week I was mighty shy of riding out where I would be apt to meet her; and you can call me a coward if you like.

Still, I had schemes, plenty of them. I wanted her—Lord knows how I wanted her!—and I got pretty desperate, sometimes. Once I saddled up with the fixed determination of riding boldly—and melodramatically—into King's Highway, facing old King, and saying: "Sir, I love your daughter. Let bygones be bygones. Dad and I forgive you, and hope you will do the same. Let us have peace, and let me have Beryl—" or something to that effect.

He'd only have done one of two things; he'd have taken a shot at me, or he'd have told me to go to the same old place where we consign unpleasant people. But I didn't tempt him, though I did tempt fate. I went over to the little butte, climbed it pensively, and sat on the flat rock and gazed forlornly at the mouth of the pass.

I had the rock to myself, but I made a discovery that set the nerves of me jumping like a man just getting over a—well, a season of dissipation. In the sandy soil next the rock were many confused footprints—the prints of little riding-boots; and they looked quite fresh. She had been there, all right, and I had missed her! I swore, and wondered what she must think of me. Then I had an inspiration. I rolled and half-smoked eight cigarettes, and scattered the stubs with careful carelessness in the immediate vicinity of the rock. I put my boots down in a clear spot of sand where they left marks that fairly shouted of my presence. Then I walked off a few steps and studied the effect with much satisfaction. When she came again, she couldn't fail to see that I had been there; that I had waited a long time—she could count the cigarette stubs and so form some estimate of the time—and had gone away, presumably in deep disappointment. Maybe it would make her feel a little less sure of herself, to know that I was camping thus earnestly on her trail. I rode home, feeling a good deal better in my mind.

That night it rained barrelsful. I laid and listened to it, and gritted my teeth. Where was all my cunning now? Where were those blatant footprints of mine that were to give their own eloquent message? I could imagine just how the water was running in yellow streams off the peak of that butte. Then it came to me that, at all