Laramie Holds the Range Part 3

Kate just heard the man's reply: "Not yet."

The hoofbeats drew away. Kate cautiously pushed back her curtain.

The late moon was s.h.i.+ning in an old and ghostly light. Distant heights rose like black walls against the sky. At intervals a peak broke sharply above the battlements, or a rift in a closer sierra opened to show the stars.

Kate could hear but could not for some time see the galloping horseman.

Then of a sudden he reached the brow of a low hill and rode swiftly out into the spectral light. There he halted. Horse and rider stood for a moment silhouetted against the sky. The horse chafed at his bit. He stretched his head restively into the north, his rider sitting motionless, a somber flat hat crowning his spare figure. For barely a moment the man sat thus immovable. Then he turned slightly in the saddle and the horse struck off into the night.

Drowsiness had deserted the tired girl that watched him. While her companions slept she sat in the solitude waiting for day. Bradley, as good as an alarm dock, was stirring with the first streak and feeding his horses. He told his pa.s.sengers that the bridges were all out and he was going back to the ford.

Belle, incredulous, when first told by Kate of a visitor in the night, had no scruples in asking questions:

"Who was here last night, Bill?"

"Wha'd' y' mean?" he countered, gathering up his lines.

"What man was it, you were talking to?" she demanded.

"I guess if I was talkin' to any man," he grumbled, "I was talkin' in my sleep. You must 'a' been 'a' dreamin'."

"Oh, come now, 'fess up, Bill." Belle nodded toward Kate. "She was awake."

Bradley started the horses, s.h.i.+fted on the box and looked not too well pleased: "I wasn't talkin' to n.o.body last night----"

"Bill, what a whopper."

"If you mean this mornin'----" he went on, doggedly.

"Well--who was here?"

"Jim Laramie."

"Jim Laramie!" echoed Belle, catching her breath and poking Kate with her elbow. "Wonder he didn't hold us up."

Bradley scowled but said nothing.

"Bradley doesn't like that," murmured Belle to Kate, as soon as the creaking of the wheels gave her a chance to speak without his hearing.

"He's a friend of Jim's."

"Where did he come from?" continued Belle, raising her voice toward Bradley.

Bradley took his time to answer: "Claimed he was goin' home," he said laconically.

"How could he get across the creek with the bridges out?" persisted Belle.

Bradley's eyes were on his horses. He was weary of question: "High water wouldn't bother him much."

"Well, I want to know! I should think it would bother anybody the way it was sweeping down last night."

"h.e.l.l!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bradley, parting with his manners and his patience together: "Jim could swim the Crazy Woman with his horse's feet tied."

"Who _is_ 'Jim'?" Kate demanded of her companion in an undertone.

"Jim Laramie? He lives in the Falling Wall."

CHAPTER III

DOUBLEDAY'S

When they got back to the ford it was daylight and the Crazy Woman was hurrying on as peacefully as if a frown had never ruffled its repose.

Gnarled trees springing out of gashes along its tortuous channel showed, in the debris lodged against their flood-bared roots and mud-swept branches, the fury of the night, and the creek banks, scoured by many floods, revealed new and savage gaps in the morning sun; but Bradley made his crossing with the stage almost as uneventfully as if a cloud-burst had never ruffled the mountains.

Kate was eager to meet her father, eager to see what might be her new home. The moment the horses got up out of the bottom, Bradley pointed with his whip to the ranch-house. Kate saw ahead of her a long, one-story log house crowning, with its group of out-buildings, a level bench that stretched toward the foothills. The landscape was bare of trees and, to Kate, brown and barren-looking, save for a patch of green near the creek where an alfalfa field lay vividly pretty in the sun.

The ranch-house, built of substantial logs, was ample in its proportions and not uninviting, even to her Eastern eyes.

Bradley, with a flourish, swept past the stable, around the corral and drew up before the door with a clatter. In front of the bunk-house on the right, a cowboy rolling a cigarette, was watching the arrival, and just as Bradley plumped Kate, on his arms, to the ground, her father, Barb Doubleday himself, opened the ranch-house door.

Kate had never seen her father. And until Bradley spoke, she had not the slightest idea that this could be he. She saw only a rough-looking man of great stature, slightly stooped, and with large features burnt to a deep brown.

"h.e.l.lo, Barb," said Bradley, without much enthusiasm.

His salutation met with as little: "What's up?" demanded Doubleday.

Kate noticed the huskiness in the strong, cold tone.

"Brought y' a pa.s.senger."

From the talk of the night she recognized her father's nickname. It was a little shock to realize that this must, indeed, be he. And the unmoved expression of his face as he surveyed her without a smite or greeting, was not rea.s.suring.

But she hastened forward: "Father?" there was a note of girlish appeal in her greeting: "I'm Kate--your daughter. You don't remember me, of course," she added with an effort to extort a welcome. "You got my letter, did you?"

He looked at her uncertainly for a moment and nodded slowly. "Was it all right," she asked, now almost panic-stricken, "to come to see you?"

Confused or preoccupied, he stumbled out some words of welcome, spoke to Belle on the stage, took the suitcase out of Bradley's hand and led Kate into the house. In the large room that she entered stood a long table and a big fireplace opened at the back. On the left, two bedrooms opened off the big room, and on the right, the kitchen.

The chill of the strange greeting embarra.s.sed Kate the more because she felt Belle could hardly fail to notice it, and her own resentment of it did not easily wear off. But hoping for better things she freshened up a little, in her father's bedroom, and by that time a man cook was bringing breakfast into the big room, which served as living-room and dining-room. Bradley, Belle, Kate and her father sat down--the men had already breakfasted.

Kate, her head in a whirl with novelty and excitement, was overcome with interest in everything, but especially in her father. Sitting at the head of the table--at one end of which fresh places had been set--he maintained her first impression of his stature. His spreading frame was covered with loose corduroy clothes--which could hardly be said to fit--and his whole appearance conveyed the impression of unusual physical strength. It had been said of Barb Doubleday, as a railroad builder, that he could handle an iron rail alone. His powerful jaw and large mouth--now fitted, or rather, supplied--with artificial teeth of proportionate size--all supported Kate's awe of his bigness. His long nose, once smashed in a railroad fight, was not seriously scarred; and originally well-shaped, it was still the best feature of a terrifically weather-beaten face that had evidently seen milder days. The good looks were gone, but not the strength. His mouth was almost shapeless but unmistakably hard, and his grayish-blue eyes were cold--very cold; try as she would, Kate could discern little love or sympathy in them. This was the man who almost twenty years earlier had deserted her mother and wee Kate, the baby, and long disappeared from Eastern view--until by accident the fact that he was alive and in the far West had become known to his wife and daughter.

Kate thought she understood something of the tragedy in her mother's life when the first sight of her father's eyes struck a chill into her own heart.

But he was her father--and her mother had tried, in spite of all, to hide or condone his faults; and more than once before she died, had made Kate promise to hunt him up and go to him. What the timid girl dreaded most was finding another woman installed in his household--in which case she meant to make her stay in the West very short. But every hour lessened these fears and as he himself gradually thawed a little, Kate took courage.

The breakfast went fast. Platters were pa.s.sed without ceremony or delay. Her father and Bradley ate as Kate had never seen men eat; only her amazement could keep pace with their quiet but unremitting efforts to clean up everything in sight. There was little mastication but much knife and fork work, with free libation of coffee; and Belle, Kate noticed, while somewhat left behind by the men, paid strict attention to the business in hand.

Conversation naturally lagged; but what took place had its surprise for Kate. Doubleday asked a few questions of Belle--everybody seemed to know everybody else--and learning she was headed for the Reservation, possibly to teach school, hired her on the spot away from the job, to go back to his eating-house at Sleepy Cat Junction. No sooner was this arranged, and Bradley told to take her luggage off the stage, than a diversion occurred.