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- Herausgeber: e-artnow
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
Miss Helen Messiter is a young woman from Michigen who inherits a ranch on the West called Lazy D. She heads off to visit the ranch by car and unexpectedly arrives in an awfully dangerous situation, finding one fugitive trapped by a number of cowboys who wants his scalp. Unaware of her actions, Helen daringly drives among them to pull off an incredible rescue. As they drive off, Helen learns that she has saved the notorious Ned Bannister, the most powerfull and the most feared man in Wyoming.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Wyoming
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. A Desert Meeting
An automobile shot out from a gash in the hills and slipped swiftly down to the butte. Here it came to a halt on the white, dusty road, while its occupant gazed with eager, unsated eyes on the great panorama that stretched before her. The earth rolled in waves like a mighty sea to the distant horizon line. From a wonderful blue sky poured down upon the land a bath of sunbeat. The air was like wine, pure and strong, and above the desert swam the rare, untempered light of Wyoming. Surely here was a peace primeval, a silence unbroken since the birth of creation.
It was all new to her, and wonderfully exhilarating. The infinite roll of plain, the distant shining mountains, the multitudinous voices of the desert drowned in a sunlit sea of space—they were all details of the situation that ministered to a large serenity.
And while she breathed deeply the satisfaction of it, an exploding rifle echo shattered the stillness. With excited sputtering came the prompt answer of a fusillade. She was new to the West; but some instinct stronger than reason told the girl that here was no playful puncher shooting up the scenery to ventilate his exuberance. Her imagination conceived something more deadly; a sinister picture of men pumping lead in a grim, close-lipped silence; a lusty plainsman, with murder in his heart, crumpling into a lifeless heap, while the thin smoke-spiral curled from his hot rifle.
So the girl imagined the scene as she ran swiftly forward through the pines to the edge of the butte bluff whence she might look down upon the coulee that nestled against it. Nor had she greatly erred, for her first sweeping glance showed her the thing she had dreaded.
In a semicircle, well back from the foot of the butte, half a dozen men crouched in the cover of the sage-brush and a scattered group of cottonwoods. They were perhaps fifty yards apart, and the attention of all of them was focused on a spot directly beneath her. Even as she looked, in that first swift moment of apprehension, a spurt of smoke came from one of the rifles and was flung back from the forked pine at the bottom of the mesa. She saw him then, kneeling behind his insufficient shelter, a trapped man making his last stand.
From where she stood the girl distinguished him very clearly, and under the field-glasses that she turned on him the details leaped to life. Tall, strong, slender, with the lean, clean build of a greyhound, he seemed as wary and alert as a panther. The broad, soft hat, the scarlet handkerchief loosely knotted about his throat, the gray shirt, spurs and overalls, proclaimed him a stockman, just as his dead horse at the entrance to the coulee told of an accidental meeting in the desert and a hurried run for cover.
That he had no chance was quite plain, but no plainer than the cool vigilance with which he proposed to make them pay. Even in the matter of defense he was worse off than they were, but he knew how to make the most of what he had; knew how to avail himself of every inch of sagebrush that helped to render him indistinct to their eyes.
One of the attackers, eager for a clearer shot, exposed himself a trifle too far in taking aim. Without any loss of time in sighting, swift as a lightning-flash, the rifle behind the forked pine spoke. That the bullet reached its mark she saw with a gasp of dismay. For the man suddenly huddled down and rolled over on his side.
His comrades appeared to take warning by this example. The men at both ends of the crescent fell back, and for a minute the girl's heart leaped with the hope that they were about to abandon the siege. Apparently the man in the scarlet kerchief had no such expectation. He deserted his position behind the pine and ran back, crouching low in the brush, to another little clump of trees closer to the bluff. The reason for this was at first not apparent to her, but she understood presently when the men who had fallen back behind the rolling hillocks appeared again well in to the edge of the bluff. Only by his timely retreat had the man saved himself from being outflanked.
It was very plain that the attackers meant to take their time to finish him in perfect safety. He was surrounded on every side by a cordon of rifles, except where the bare face of the butte hung down behind him. To attempt to scale it would have been to expose himself as a mark for every gun to certain death.
It was now that she heard the man who seemed to be directing the attack call out to another on his right. She was too far to make out the words, but their effect was clear to her. He pointed to the brow of the butte above, and a puncher in white woolen chaps dropped back out of range and swung to the saddle upon one of the ponies bunched in the rear. He cantered round in a wide circle and made for the butte. His purpose was obviously to catch their victim in the unprotected rear, and fire down upon him from above.
The young woman shouted a warning, but her voice failed to carry. For a moment she stood with her hands pressed together in despair, then turned and swiftly scudded to her machine. She sprang in, swept forward, reached the rim of the mesa, and plunged down. Never before had she attempted so precarious a descent in such wild haste. The car fairly leaped into space, and after it struck swayed dizzily as it shot down. The girl hung on, her face white and set, the pulse in her temple beating wildly. She could do nothing, as the machine rocked down, but hope against many chances that instant destruction might be averted.
Utterly beyond her control, the motor-car thundered down, reached the foot of the butte, and swept over a little hill in its wild flight. She rushed by a mounted horseman in the thousandth part of a second. She was still speeding at a tremendous velocity, but a second hill reduced this somewhat. She had not yet recovered control of the machine, but, though her eyes instinctively followed the white road that flashed past, she again had photographed on her brain the scene of the turbid tragedy in which she was intervening.
At the foot of the butte the road circled and dipped into the coulee. She braced herself for the shock, but, though the wheels skidded till her heart was in her throat, the automobile, hanging on the balance of disaster, swept round in safety.
Her horn screamed an instant warning to the trapped man. She could not see him, and for an instant her heart sank with the fear that they had killed him. But she saw then that they were still firing, and she continued her honking invitation as the car leaped forward into the zone of spitting bullets.
By this time she was recovering control of the motor, and she dared not let her attention wander, but out of the corner of her eye she appreciated the situation. Temporarily, out of sheer amaze at this apparition from the blue, the guns ceased their sniping. She became aware that a light curly head, crouched low in the sage-brush, was moving rapidly to meet her at right angles, and in doing so was approaching directly the line of fire. She could see him dodging to and fro as he moved forward, for the rifles were again barking.
She was within two hundred yards of him, still going rapidly, but not with the same headlong rush as before, when the curly head disappeared in the sage-brush. It was up again presently, but she could see that the man came limping, and so uncertainly that twice he pitched forward to the ground. Incautiously one of his assailants ran forward with a shout the second time his head went down. Crack! The unerring rifle rang out, and the impetuous one dropped in his tracks.
As she approached, the young woman slowed without stopping, and as the car swept past Curly Head flung himself in headlong. He picked himself up from her feet, crept past her to the seat beyond, and almost instantly whipped his rifle to his shoulder in prompt defiance of the fire that was now converged on them.
Yet in a few moments the sound died away, for a voice midway in the crescent had shouted an amazed discovery:
“By God, it's a woman!”
The car skimmed forward over the uneven ground toward the end of the semicircle, and passed within fifty yards of the second man from the end, the one she had picked out as the leader of the party. He was a black, swarthy fellow in plain leather chaps and blue shirt. As they passed he took a long, steady aim.
“Duck!” shouted the man beside her, and dragged her down on the seat so that his body covered hers.
A puff of wind fanned the girl's cheek.
“Near thing,” her companion said coolly. He looked back at the swarthy man and laughed softly. “Some day you'll mebbe wish you had sent your pills straighter, Mr. Judd Morgan.”
Yet a few wheel-turns and they had dipped forward out of range among the great land waves that seemed to stretch before them forever. The unexpected had happened, and she had achieved a rescue in the face of the impossible.
“Hurt badly?” the girl inquired briefly, her dark-blue eyes meeting his as frankly as those of a boy.
“No need for an undertaker. I reckon I'll survive, ma'am.”
“Where are you hit?”
“I just got a telegram from my ankle saying there was a cargo of lead arrived there unexpected,” he drawled easily.
“Hurts a good deal, doesn't it?”
“No more than is needful to keep my memory jogged up. It's a sort of a forget-me-not souvenir. For a good boy; compliments of Mr. Jim Henson,” he explained.
Her dark glance swept him searchingly. She disapproved the assurance of his manner even while the youth in her applauded his reckless sufficiency. His gay courage held her unconsenting admiration even while she resented it. He was a trifle too much at his ease for one who had just been snatched from dire peril. Yet even in his insouciance there was something engaging; something almost of distinction.
“What was the trouble?”
Mirth bubbled in his gray eyes. “I gathered, ma'am, that they wanted to collect my scalp.”
“Do what?” she frowned.
“Bump me off—send me across the divide.”
“Oh, I know that. But why?”
He seemed to reproach himself. “Now how could I be so neglectful? I clean forgot to ask.”
“That's ridiculous,” was her sharp verdict.
“Yes, ma'am, plumb ridiculous. My only excuse is that they began scattering lead so sudden I didn't have time to ask many 'Whyfors.' I reckon we'll just have to call it a Wyoming difference of opinion,” he concluded pleasantly.
“Which means, I suppose, that you are not going to tell me.”
“I got so much else to tell y'u that's a heap more important,” he laughed. “Y'u see, I'm enjoyin' my first automobile ride. It was certainly thoughtful of y'u to ask me to go riding with y'u, Miss Messiter.”
“So you know my name. May I ask how?” was her astonished question.
He gave the low laugh that always seemed to suggest a private source of amusement of his own. “I suspicioned that might be your name when I say y'u come a-sailin' down from heaven to gather me up like Enoch.”
“Why?”
“Well, ma'am, I happened to drift in to Gimlet Butte two or three days ago, and while I was up at the depot looking for some freight a train sashaid in and side tracked a flat car. There was an automobile on that car addressed to Miss Helen Messiter. Now, automobiles are awful seldom in this country. I don't seem to remember having seen one before.”
“I see. You're quite a Sherlock Holmes. Do you know anything more about me?”
“I know y'u have just fallen heir to the Lazy D. They say y'u are a schoolmarm, but I don't believe it.”
“Well, I am.” Then, “Why don't you believe it?” she added.
He surveyed her with his smile audacious, let his amused eyes wander down from the mobile face with the wild-rose bloom to the slim young figure so long and supple, then serenely met her frown.
“Y'u don't look it.”
“No? Are you the owner of a composite photograph of the teachers of the country?”
He enjoyed again his private mirth. “I should like right well to have the pictures of some of them.”
She glanced at him sharply, but he was gazing so innocently at the purple Shoshones in the distance that she could not give him the snub she thought he needed.
“You are right. My name is Helen Messiter,” she said, by way of stimulating a counter fund of information. For, though she was a young woman not much given to curiosity, she was aware of an interest in this spare, broad-shouldered youth who was such an incarnation of bronzed vigor.
“Glad to meet y'u, Miss Messiter,” he responded, and offered his firm brown hand in Western fashion.
But she observed resentfully that he did not mention his own name. It was impossible to suppose that he knew no better, and she was driven to conclude that he was silent of set purpose. Very well! If he did not want to introduce himself she was not going to urge it upon him. In a businesslike manner she gave her attention to eating up the dusty miles.
“Yes, ma'am. I reckon I never was more glad to death to meet a lady than I was to meet up with y'u,” he continued, cheerily. “Y'u sure looked good to me as y'u come a-foggin' down the road. I fair had been yearnin' for company but was some discouraged for fear the invitation had miscarried.” He broke off his sardonic raillery and let his level gaze possess her for a long moment. “Miss Messiter, I'm certainly under an obligation to y'u I can't repay. Y'u saved my life,” he finished gravely.
“Nonsense.”
“Fact.”
“It isn't a personal matter at all,” she assured him, with a touch of impatient hauteur.
“It 's a heap personal to me.”
In spite of her healthy young resentment she laughed at the way in which he drawled this out, and with a swift sweep her boyish eyes took in again his compelling devil-may-care charm. She was a tenderfoot, but intuition as well as experience taught her that he was unusual enough to be one of ten thousand. No young Greek god's head could have risen more superbly above the brick-tanned column of the neck than this close-cropped curly one. Gray eyes, deep and unwavering and masterful, looked out of a face as brown as Wyoming. He was got up with no thought of effect, but the tigerish litheness, the picturesque competency of him, spake louder than costuming.
“Aren't you really hurt worse than you pretend? I'm sure your ankle ought to be attended to as soon as possible.”
“Don't tell me you're a lady doctor, ma'am,” he burlesqued his alarm.
“Can you tell me where the nearest ranch house is?” she asked, ignoring his diversion.
“The Lazy D is the nearest, I reckon.”
“Which direction?”
“North by east, ma'am.”
“Then I'll take the most direct road to it.
“In that case I'll thank y'u for my ride and get out here.”
“But—why?”
He waved a jaunty hand toward the recent battlefield. “The Lazy D lies right back of that hill. I expect, mebbe, those wolves might howl again if we went back.”
“Where, then, shall I take you?”
“I hate to trouble y'u to go out of your way.
“I dare say, but I'm going just the same,” she told him, dryly.
“If you're right determined—” He interrupted himself to point to the south. “Do y'u see that camel-back peak over there?”
“The one with the sunshine on its lower edge?”
“That's it, Miss Messiter. They call those two humps the Antelope Peaks. If y'u can drop me somewhere near there I think I'll manage all right.”
“I'm not going to leave you till we reach a house,” she informed him promptly. “You're not fit to walk fifty yards.”
“That's right kind of y'u, but I could not think of asking so much. My friends will find me if y'u leave me where I can work a heliograph.”
“Or your enemies,” she cut in.
“I hope not. I'd not likely have the luck to get another invitation right then to go riding with a friendly young lady.”
She gave him direct, cool, black-blue eyes that met and searched his. “I'm not at all sure she is friendly. I shall want to find out the cause of the trouble you have just had before I make up my mind as to that.”
“I judge people by their actions. Y'u didn't wait to find out before bringing the ambulance into action,” he laughed.
“I see you do not mean to tell me.”
“You're quite a lawyer, ma'am,” he evaded.
“I find you a very slippery witness, then.”
“Ask anything y'u like and I'll tell you.”
“Very well. Who were those men, and why were they trying to kill you?”
“They turned their wolf loose on me because I shot up one of them yesterday.”
“Dear me! Is it your business to go around shooting people? That's three I happen to know that you have shot. How many more?”
“No more, ma'am—not recently.”
“Well, three is quite enough—recently,” she mimicked. “You seem to me a good deal of a desperado.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Don't say 'Yes, ma'am,' like that, as if it didn't matter in the least whether you are or not,” she ordered.
“No, ma'am.”
“Oh!” She broke off with a gesture of impatience at his burlesque of obedience. “You know what I mean—that you ought to deny it; ought to be furious at me for suggesting it.”
“Ought I?”
“Of course you ought.”
“There's a heap of ways I ain't up to specifications,” he admitted, cheerfully.
“And who are they—the men that were attacking you?”
There was a gleam of irrepressible humor in the bold eyes. “Your cow-punchers, ma'am.”
“My cow-punchers?”
“They ce'tainly belong to the Lazy D outfit.”
“And you say that you shot one of my men yesterday?” He could see her getting ready for a declaration of war.
“Down by Willow Creek—Yes, ma'am,” he answered, comfortably.
“And why, may I ask?” she flamed
“That's a long story, Miss Messiter. It wouldn't be square for me to get my version in before your boys. Y'u ask them.” He permitted himself a genial smile, somewhat ironic. “I shouldn't wonder but what they'll give me a giltedged testimonial as an unhanged horse thief.”
“Isn't there such a thing as law in Wyoming?” the girl demanded.
“Lots of it. Y'u can buy just as good law right here as in Kalamazoo.”
“I wish I knew where to find it.”
“Like to put me in the calaboose?”
“In the penitentiary. Yes, sir!” A moment later the question that was in her thoughts leaped hotly from her lips. “Who are you, sir, that dare to commit murder and boast of it?”
She had flicked him on the raw at last. Something that was near to pain rested for a second in his eyes. “Murder is a hard name, ma'am. And I didn't say he was daid, or any of the three,” came his gentle answer.
“You MEANT to kill them, anyhow.”
“Did I?” There was the ghost of a sad smile about his eyes.
“The way you act, a person might think you one of Ned Bannister's men,” she told him, scornfully.
“I expect you're right.”
She repented her a little at a charge so unjust. “If you are not ashamed of your name why are you so loath to part with it?”
“Y'u didn't ask me my name,” he said, a dark flush sweeping his face.
“I ask it now.”
Like the light from a snuffed candle the boyish recklessness had gone out of his face. His jaws were set like a vise and he looked hard as hammered steel.
“My name is Bannister,” he said, coldly.
“Ned Bannister, the outlaw,” she let slip, and was aware of a strange sinking of the heart.
It seemed to her that something sinister came to the surface in his handsome face. “I reckon we might as well let it go at that,” he returned, with bitter briefness.
Chapter 2. The King of the Big Horn Country
Two months before this time Helen Messiter had been serenely teaching a second grade at Kalamazoo, Michigan, notwithstanding the earnest efforts of several youths of that city to induce her to retire to domesticity “What's the use of being a schoolmarm?” had been the burden of their plaint. “Any spinster can teach kids C-A-T, Cat, but only one in several thousand can be the prettiest bride in Kalamazoo.” None of them, however, had been able to drive the point sufficiently home, and it is probable that she would have continued to devote herself to Young America if an uncle she had never seen had not died without a will and left her a ranch in Wyoming yclept the Lazy D.
When her lawyer proposed to put the ranch on the market Miss Helen had a word to say.
“I think not. I'll go out and see it first, anyhow,” she said.
“But really, my dear young lady, it isn't at all necessary. Fact is, I've already had an offer of a hundred thousand dollars for it. Now, I should judge that a fair price.”
“Very likely,” his client interrupted, quietly. “But, you see, I don't care to sell.”
“Then what in the world are you going to do with it?”
“Run it.”
“But, my dear Miss Messiter, it isn't an automobile or any other kind of toy. You must remember that it takes a business head and a great deal of experience to make such an investment pay. I really think—”
“My school ends on the fourteenth of June. I'll get a substitute for the last two months. I shall start for Wyoming on the eighteenth of April.”
The man of law gasped, explained the difficulties again carefully as to a child, found that he was wasting his breath, and wisely gave it up.
Miss Messiter had started on the eighteenth of April, as she had announced. When she reached Gimlet Butte, the nearest railroad point to the Lazy D, she found a group of curious, weatherbeaten individuals gathered round a machine foreign to their experience. It was on a flat car, and the general opinion ran the gamut from a newfangled sewing machine to a thresher. Into this guessing contest came its owner with so brisk and businesslike an energy that inside of two hours she was testing it up and down the wide street of Gimlet Butte, to the wonder and delight of an audience to which each one of the eleven saloons of the city had contributed its admiring quota.
Meanwhile the young woman attended strictly to business. She had disappeared for half an hour with a suit case into the Elk House; and when she returned in a short-skirted corduroy suit, leggings and wide-brimmed gray Stetson hat, all Gimlet Butte took an absorbing interest in the details of this delightful adventure that had happened to the town. The population was out en masse to watch her slip down the road on a trial trip.
Presently “Soapy” Sothern, drifting in on his buckskin from the Hoodoo Peak country, where for private reasons of his own he had been for the past month a sojourner, reported that he had seen the prettiest sight in the State climbing under a gasoline bronc with a monkey-wrench in her hand. Where? Right over the hill on the edge of town. The immediate stampede for the cow ponies was averted by a warning chug-chug that sounded down the road, followed by the appearance of a flashing whir that made the ponies dance on their hind legs.
“The gasoline bronc lady sure makes a hit with me,” announced “Texas,” gravely. “I allow I'll rustle a job with the Lazy D outfit.”
“She ce'tainly rides herd on that machine like a champeen,” admitted Soapy. “I reckon I'll drift over to the Lazy D with you to look after yore remains, Tex, when the lightning hits you.”
Miss Messiter swung the automobile round in a swift circle, came to an abrupt halt in front of the hotel, and alighted without delay. As she passed in through the half score of admirers she had won, her dark eyes swept smilingly over assembled Cattleland. She had already met most of them at the launching of the machine from the flat car, and had directed their perspiring energies as they labored to follow her orders. Now she nodded a recognition with a little ripple of gay laughter.
“I'm delighted to be able to contribute to the entertainment of Gimlet Butte,” she said, as she swept in. For this young woman was possessed of Western adaptation. It gave her no conscientious qualms to exchange conversation fraternal with these genial savages.
The Elk House did not rejoice in a private dining room, and competition strenuous ensued as to who should have the pleasure of sitting beside the guest of honor. To avoid ill feeling, the matter was determined by a game of freeze-out, in which Texas and a mature gentleman named, from his complexion, “Beet” Collins, were the lucky victors. Texas immediately repaired to the general store, where he purchased a new scarlet bandanna for the occasion; also a cake of soap with which to rout the alkali dust that had filtered into every pore of his hands and face from a long ride across the desert.
Came supper and Texas simultaneously, the cow-puncher's face scrubbed to an apple shine. At the last moment Collins defaulted, his nerve completely gone. Since, however, he was a thrifty soul, he sold his place to Soapy for ten dollars, and proceeded to invest the proceeds in an immediate drunk.
During the first ten minutes of supper Miss Messiter did not appear, and the two guardians who flanked her chair solicitously were the object of much badinage.
“She got one glimpse of that red haid of Tex and the pore lady's took to the sage,” explained Yorky.
“And him scrubbed so shiny fust time since Christmas before the big blizzard,” sighed Doc Rogers.
“Shucks! She ain't scared of no sawed-off, hammered-down runt like Texas, No, siree! Miss Messiter's on the absent list 'cause she's afraid she cayn't resist the blandishments of Soapy. Did yo' ever hear about Soapy and that Caspar hash slinger?”
“Forget it, Slim,” advised Soapy, promptly. He had been engaged in lofty and oblivious conversation with Texas, but he did not intend to allow reminiscences to get under way just now.
At this opportune juncture arrived the mistress of the “gasoline bronc,” neatly clad in a simple white lawn with blue trimmings. She looked like a gleam of sunshine in her fresh, sweet youth; and not even in her own school room had she ever found herself the focus of a cleaner, more unstinted admiration. For the outdoors West takes off its hat reverently to women worthy of respect, especially when they are young and friendly.
Helen Messiter had come to Wyoming because the call of adventure, the desire for experience outside of rutted convention, were stirring her warm-blooded youth. She had seen enough of life lived in a parlor, and when there came knocking at her door a chance to know the big, untamed outdoors at first hand she had at once embraced it like a lover. She was eager for her new life, and she set out skillfully to make these men tell her what she wanted to know. To them, of course, it was an old story, and whatever of romance it held was unconscious. But since she wanted to talk of the West they were more than ready to please her.
So she listened, and drew them out with adroit questions when it was necessary. She made them talk of life on the open range, of rustlers and those who lived outside the law in the upper Shoshone country, of the deadly war waging between the cattle and sheep industries.
“Are there any sheep near the Lazy D ranch?” she asked, intensely interested in Soapy's tale of how cattle and sheep could no more be got to mix than oil and water.
For an instant nobody answered her question; then Soapy replied, with what seemed elaborate carelessness:
“Ned Bannister runs a bunch of about twelve thousand not more'n fifteen or twenty miles from your place.”
“And you say they are spoiling the range?”
“They're ce'tainly spoiling it for cows.”
“But can't something be done? If my cows were there first I don't see what right he has to bring his sheep there,” the girl frowned.
The assembled company attended strictly to supper. The girl, surprised at the stillness, looked round. “Well?”
“Now you're shouting, ma'am! That's what we say,” enthused Texas, spurring to the rescue.
“It doesn't much matter what you say. What do you do?” asked Helen, impatiently. “Do you lie down and let Mr. Bannister and his kind drive their sheep over you?”
“Do we, Soapy?” grinned Texas. Yet it seemed to her his smile was not quite carefree.
“I'm not a cowman myself,” explained Soapy to the girl. “Nor do I run sheep. I—”
“Tell Miss Messiter what yore business is, Soapy,” advised Yorky from the end of the table, with a mouthful of biscuit swelling his cheeks.
Soapy crushed the irrepressible Yorky with a look, but that young man hit back smilingly.
“Soapy, he sells soap, ma'am. He's a sorter city salesman, I reckon.”
“I should never have guessed it. Mr. Sothern does not LOOK like a salesman,” said the girl, with a glance at his shrewd, hard, expressionless face.
“Yes, ma'am, he's a first-class seller of soap, is Mr. Sothern,” chuckled the cow-puncher, kicking his friends gayly under the table.
“You can see I never sold HIM any, Miss Messiter,” came back Soapy, sorrowfully.
All this was Greek to the young lady from Kalamazoo. How was she to know that Mr. Sothern had vended his soap in small cubes on street corners, and that he wrapped bank notes of various denominations in the bars, which same were retailed to eager customers for the small sum of fifty cents, after a guarantee that the soap was good? His customers rarely patronized him twice; and frequently they used bad language because the soap wrapping was not as valuable as they had expected. This was manifestly unfair, for Mr. Sothern, who made no claims to philanthropy, often warned them that the soap should be bought on its merits, and not with an eye single to the premium that might or might not accompany the package.
“I started to tell you, ma'am, when that infant interrupted, that the cowmen don't aim to quit business yet a while. They've drawn a dead-line, Miss Messiter.”
“A dead-line?”
“Yes, ma'am, beyond which no sheep herder is to run his bunch.”
“And if he does?” the girl asked, open eyed.
“He don't do it twict, ma'am. Why don't you pass the fritters to Miss Messiter, Slim?”
“And about this Bannister Who is he?”
Her innocent question seemed to ring a bell for silence; seemed to carry with it some hidden portent that stopped idle conversation as a striking clock that marks the hour of an execution.
The smile that had been gay grew grim, and men forgot the subject of their light, casual talk. It was Sothern that answered her, and she observed that his voice was grave, his face studiously without expression.
“Mr. Bannister, ma'am, is a sheepman.”
“So I understood, but—” Her eyes traveled swiftly round the table, and appraised the sudden sense of responsibility that had fallen on these reckless, careless frontiersmen. “I am wondering what else he is. Really, he seems to be the bogey man of Gimlet Butte.”
There was another instant silence, and again it was Soapy that lifted it. “I expaict you'll like Wyoming, Miss Messiter; leastways I hope you will. There's a right smart of country here.” His gaze went out of the open door to the vast sea of space that swam in the fine sunset light. “Yes, most folks that ain't plumb spoilt with city ways likes it.”
“Sure she'll like it. Y'u want to get a good, easy-riding hawss, Miss Messiter,” advised Slim.
“And a rifle,” added Texas, promptly.
It occurred to her that they were all working together to drift the conversation back to a safe topic. She followed the lead given her, but she made up her mind to know what it was about her neighbor, Mr. Bannister, the sheep herder, that needed to be handled with such wariness and circumspection of speech.
Her chance came half an hour later, when she stood talking to the landlady on the hotel porch in the mellow twilight that seemed to rest on the land like a moonlit aura. For the moment they were alone.
“What is it about this man Bannister that makes men afraid to speak of him?” she demanded, with swift impulse.
Her landlady's startled eyes went alertly round to see that they were alone. “Hush, child! You mustn't speak of him like that,” warned the older woman.
“Why mustn't I? That's what I want to know.”
“Is isn't healthy.”
“What do you mean?”
