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

events, some of the cigarette-stubs would be left; so I turned over and went to sleep.

I wish to say, before I forget it, that I don't think I am deceitful by nature. You see, it changes a fellow a lot to get all tangled up in his feelings over a girl that doesn't seem to care a rap for you. He does things that are positively idiotic At any rate, I did. And I could sympathize some with Barney MacTague; only, his girl had a crooked nose and no eyebrows to speak of, so he hadn't the excuse that I had. Take a girl with eyes like Beryl—

A couple of days after that—days when I hadn't the nerve to go near the little butte—Frosty drew six months' wages and disappeared without a word to anybody. He didn't come back that night, and the next day Perry Potter, who knows well the strange freaks cowboys will sometimes take when they have been working steadily for a long time, suggested that I ride over to Kenmore and see if Frosty was there, and try my powers of persuasion on him—unless he was already broke; in which case, according to Perry Potter, he would come back without any persuading. Perry Potter added dryly that it wouldn't be out of my way any, and would only be a little longer ride. I must say I looked at him with suspicion. The way that little dried-up sinner found out everything was positively uncanny.

Frosty, as I soon discovered, was not in Kenmore. He had been, for I learned by inquiring around that he had passed the night there at that one little hotel. Also that he had, not more than two hours before—or three, at most—hired a rig and driven on to Osage. A man told me that he had taken a lady with him; but, knowing Frosty as I did, I couldn't quite swallow that. It was queer, though, about his hiring a rig and leaving his saddle-horse there in the stable. I couldn't understand it, but I wasn't going to buy into Frosty's affairs unless I had to. I ate my dinner dejectedly in the hotel—the dinner was enough to make any man dejected—and started home again.

CHAPTER XV. The Broken Motor-car.

Out where the trail from Kenmore intersects the one leading from Laurel to and through King's Highway, I passed over a little hill and came suddenly upon a big, dark-gray touring-car stalled in the road. In it Beryl King sat looking intently down at her toes. I nearly fell off my horse at the shock of it, and then my blood got to acting funny, so that my head felt queer. Then I came to, and rode boldly up to her, mentally shaking hands with myself over my good luck. For it was good luck just to see her, whether anything came of it or not.

"Something wrong with the wheelbarrow?" I asked her, with a placid superiority.

She looked up with a little start—she never did seem to feel my presence until I spoke to her—and frowned prettily; but whether at me or at the car, I didn't know.

"I guess something must be," she answered quite meekly, for her. "It keeps making the funniest buzz when I start it—and it's Mr. Weaver's car, and he doesn't know—I—I borrowed it without asking, and—"

"That car is all right," I bluffed from my saddle. "It's simply obeying instructions. It comes under the jurisdiction of my private Providence, you see. I ordered it that you should be here, and in distress, and grateful for my helping hand." How was that for straight nerve?

"Well, then, let's have the helping hand and be done. I should be at home, by now. They will wonder—I just went for a—a little spin, and when I turned to go back, it started that funny noise. I—I'm afraid of it. It—might blow up, or—or something."

She seemed in a strangely explanatory mood, that was, to say the least, suspicious. Either she had come out purposely to torment me, or she was afraid of what she knew was in my mind, and wanted to make me forget it. But my mettle was up for good. I had no notion of forgetting, or of letting her.

"I'll do what I can, and willingly," I told her coolly. "It looks like a good car—an accommodating car. I hope you are prepared to pay the penalty—"

"Penalty?" she interrupted, and opened her eyes at me innocently; a bit too innocently, I may say.

"Penalty; yes. The penalty of letting me find you outside of King's Highway, alone," I explained brazenly.

She tried a lever hurriedly, and the car growled up at her so that she quit. Then she pulled herself together and faced me nonchalantly.

"Oh-h. You mean about the black velvet mask? I'm afraid—I had forgotten that funny little—joke." With all she could do, her face and her tone were not convincing.

I gathered courage as she lost it. "I see that I must demonstrate to you the fact that I am not altogether a joke," I said grimly, and got down from my horse.

I don't, to this day, know what she imagined I was going to do. She sat very still; the kind of stillness a rabbit adopts when he hopes to escape the notice of an enemy. I could see that she hardly breathed, even.

But when I reached her, I only got a wrench out of the tool-box and yanked open the hood to see what ailed the motor. I knew something of that make of car; in fact, I had owned one before I got the Yellow Peril, and I had a suspicion that there wasn't much wrong; a loosened nut will sometimes sound a good deal more serious than it really is. Still, a half-formed idea—a perfectly crazy idea—made me go over the whole machine very carefully to make sure she was all right.

When I was through I stood up and found that she was regarding me curiously, yet with some amusement. She seemed to feel herself mistress of the situation, and to consider me as an interesting plaything. I didn't approve that attitude.

"At all events," she said when she met my eyes, and speaking as if there had been no break in our conversation, "you are rather a good joke. Thank you so much."

I put away the wrench, fastened the lid of the tool-box, and then I faced her grimly. "I see mere words are wasted on you," I said. "I shall have to carry you off—Beryl King; I shall carry you off if you look at me that way again!"

She did look that way, only more so. I wonder what she thought a man was made of, to stand it. I set my teeth hard together.

"Have you got the—er—the black velvet mask?" she taunted, leaning just the least bit toward me. Her eyes—I say it deliberately—were a direct challenge that no man could refuse to accept and feel himself a man after.

"Mask or no mask—you'll see!" I turned away to where my horse was standing eying the car with extreme disfavor, picked up the reins, and glanced over my shoulder; I didn't know but she would give me the slip. She was sitting very straight, with both hands on the wheel and her eyes looking straight before her. She might have been posing for a photograph, from the look of her. I tied the reins with a quick twist over the saddle-horn and gave him a slap on the rump. I knew he would go straight home. Then I went back and stepped into the car just as she reached down and started the motor. If she had meant to run away from me she had been just a second too late. She gave me a sidelong, measuring glance, and gasped. The car slid easily along the trail as if it were listening for what we were going to say.

"I shall drive," I announced quietly, taking her hands gently from the wheel. She moved over to make room mechanically, as if she didn't in the least understand this new move of mine. I know she never dreamed of what was really in my heart to do.

"You will drive—where?" her voice was politely freezing.

"To find that preacher, of course," I answered, trying to sound surprised that she should ask, I sent the speed up a notch.

"You—you never would dare!" she cried breathlessly, and a little anxiously.

"The deuce I wouldn't!" I retorted, and laughed in the face of her. It was queer, but my thoughts went back, for just a flash, to the time Barney had dared me to drive the Yellow Peril up past the Cliff House to Sutro Baths. I had the same heady elation of daredeviltry. I wouldn't have turned back, then, even if I hadn't cared so much for her.

She didn't say anything more, and I sent the car ahead at a pace that almost matched the mood I was in, and that brought White Divide sprinting up to meet us. The trail was good, and the car was a dandy. I was making straight for King's Highway as the best and only chance of carrying out my foolhardy design. I doubt if any bold, bad knight of old ever had the effrontery to carry his lady-love straight past her own door in broad daylight.

Yet it was the safest thing I could do. I meant to get to Osage, and the only practicable route for a car lay through the pass. To be sure, there was a preacher at Kenmore; but with the chance of old King being there also and interrupting the ceremony—supposing I brought matters successfully that far—with a shot or two, did not in the least appeal to me. I had made sure that there was plenty of gasoline aboard, so I drove her right along.

"I hope your father isn't home," I remarked truthfully when we were slipping into the wide jaws of the pass.

"He is, though; and so is Mr. Weaver. I think you had better jump out here and run home, or it is not a velvet mask you will need, but a mantle of invisibility." I couldn't make much of her tone, but her words implied that even yet she would not take me seriously.

"Well, I've neither mask nor mantle," I said, "But the way I can fade down the pass will, I think, be a fair substitute for both."

She said nothing whatever to that, but she began to seem interested in the affair—as she had need to be. She might have jumped out and escaped while I was down opening the gate—but she didn't. She sat quite still, as if we were only out on a commonplace little jaunt. I wondered if she didn't have the spirit of adventure in her make-up, also. Girls do, sometimes. When I had got in again, I turned to her, remembering something.

"Gadzooks, madam! I command you not to scream," I quoted sternly.

At that, for the first time in our acquaintance, she laughed; such a delicious, rollicky little laugh that I felt ready, at the sound, to face a dozen fathers and they all old Kings.

As we came chugging up to the house, several faces appeared in the doorway as if to welcome and scold the runaway. I saw old King with his pipe in his mouth; and there were Aunt Lodema and Weaver. They were all smiling at the escapade—Beryl's escapade, that is—and I don't think they realized just at first who I was, or that I was in any sense a menace to their peace of mind.

When we came opposite and showed no disposition to stop, or even to slow up, I saw the smiles freeze to amazement, and then—but I hadn't the time to look. Old King yelled something, but by that time we were skidding around the first shed, where Shylock had been shot down on my last trip through there. It was a new shed, I observed mechanically as we went by. I heard much shouting as we disappeared, but by that time we were almost through the gantlet. I made the last turn on two wheels, and scudded away up the open trail of the pass.

CHAPTER XVI. One More Race.

A faint toot-toot warned from behind.

"They've got out the other car," said Beryl, a bit tremulously; and added, "it's a much bigger one than this."

I let her out all I dared for the road we were traveling; and then there we were, at that blessed gate. I hadn't thought of it till we were almost upon it, but it didn't take much thought; there was only one thing to do, and I did it.

I caught Beryl by an arm and pulled her down to the floor of