Sawtooth Ranch Part 6

THE MAN AT WHISPER

Brit Hunter finished was.h.i.+ng the breakfast dishes and put a stick of wood into the broken old cook-stove that had served him and Frank for fifteen years and was feeling its age. Lorraine's breakfast was in the oven, keeping warm. Brit looked in, tested the heat with his gnarled hand to make sure that the sour-dough biscuits would not be dried to crusts, and closed the door upon them and the bacon and fried potatoes.

Frank Johnson had the horses saddled and it was time to go, yet Brit lingered, uneasily conscious that his habitation was lacking in many things which a beautiful young woman might consider absolute necessities. He had seen in Lorraine's eyes, as they glanced here and there about the grimy walls, a certain disparagement of her surroundings. The look had made him wince, though he could not quite decide what it was that displeased her. Maybe she wanted lace curtains, or something.

He set the four chairs in a row against the wall, swept up the bits of bark and ashes beside the stove, made sure that the water bucket was standing full on its bench beside the door, sent another critical glance around the room, and tip-toed over to the dish cupboard and let down the flowered calico curtain that had been looped up over a nail for convenience. The sun sent a bright, wide bar of yellow light across the room to rest on the shelf behind the stove where stood the salt can, the soda, the teapot, a box of matches and two pepper cans, one empty and the other full. Brit always meant to throw out that empty pepper can and always neglected to do so. Just now he remembered picking up the empty one and shaking it over the potatoes futilely and then changing it for the full one. But he did not take it away; in the wilderness one learns to save useless things in the faint hope that some day they may become useful. The shelves were cluttered with fit companions to that empty pepper can. Brit thought that he would have "cleaned out" had he known that Lorraine was coming. Since she was here, it scarcely seemed worth while.

He walked on his boot-toes to the door of the second room of the cabin, listened there for a minute, heard no sound and took a tablet and pencil off another shelf littered with useless things. The note which he wrote painstakingly, lest she might think him lacking in education, he laid upon the table beside Lorraine's plate; then went out, closing the door behind him as quietly as a squeaking door can be made to close.

Lorraine, in the other room, heard the squeak and sat up. Her wrist watch, on the chair beside her bed, said that it was fifteen minutes past six, which she considered an unearthly hour for rising. She pulled up the covers and tried to sleep again. The day would be long enough, at best. There was nothing to do, unless she took that queer old horse with withers like the breastbone of a lean Christmas turkey and hips that reminded her of the little roofs over dormer windows, and went for a ride. And if she did that, there was nowhere to go and nothing to do when she arrived there.

In a very few days Lorraine had exhausted the sights of Quirt Creek and vicinity. If she rode south she would eventually come to the top of a hill whence she could look down upon further stretches of barrenness.

If she rode east she would come eventually to the road along which she had walked from Echo, Idaho. Lorraine had had enough of that road. If she went north she would--well, she would not meet Mr Lone Morgan again, for she had tried it twice, and had turned back because there seemed no end to the trail twisting through the sage and rocks. West she had not gone, but she had no doubt that it would be the same dreary monotony of dull gray landscape.

Monotony of landscape was one thing which Lorraine could not endure, unless it had a foreground of riders hurtling here and there, and of perspiring men around a camera tripod. At the Sawtooth ranch, after she was able to be up, she had seen cowboys, but they had lacked the dash and the picturesque costuming of the West she knew. They were mostly commonplace young men, jogging past the house on horseback, or loitering down by the corrals. They had offered absolutely no interest or "colour" to the place, and the owner's son, Bob Warfield, had driven her over to the Quirt in a Ford and had seemed exactly like any other big, good-looking young man who thought well of himself. Lorraine was not susceptible to mere good looks, three years with the "movies"

having disillusioned her quite thoroughly. Too many young men of Bob Warfield's general type had attempted to make love to her--lightly and not too well--for Lorraine to be greatly impressed.

She yawned, looked at her watch again, found that she had spent exactly six minutes in meditating upon her immediate surroundings, and fell to wondering why it was that the real West was so terribly commonplace.

Why, yesterday she had been brought to such a pa.s.s of sheer loneliness that she had actually been driven to reading an old horse-doctor book!

She had learned the symptoms of epizootic--whatever that was--and poll-evil and stringhalt, and had gone from that to making a shopping tour through a Montgomery-Ward catalogue. There was nothing else in the house to read, except a half-dozen old copies of the _Boise News_.

There was nothing to do, nothing lo see, no one to talk to. Her dad and the big, heavy-set man whom he called Frank, seemed uncomfortably aware of their deficiencies and were pitiably anxious to make her feel welcome--and failed. They called her "Raine." The other two men did not call her anything at all. They were both sandy-complexioned and they both chewed tobacco quite noticeably, and when they sat down in their s.h.i.+rt sleeves to eat, Lorraine had seen irregular humps in their hip pockets which must be six-guns; though why they should carry them in their pockets instead of in holster belts buckled properly around their bodies and sagging savagely down at one side and swinging ferociously when they walked, Lorraine could not imagine. They did not wear chaps, either, and their spurs were just spurs, without so much as a silver concho anywhere. Cowboys in overalls and blue gingham s.h.i.+rts and faded old coats whose lapels lay in wrinkles and whose pockets were torn down at the corners! If Lorraine had not been positive that this was actually a cattle ranch in Idaho, she never would have believed that they were anything but day labourers.

"It's a comedy part for the cattle-queen's daughter," she admitted, putting out a hand to stroke the lean, gray cat that jumped upon her bed from the open window. "Ket, it's a _scream_! I'll take my West before the camera, thank you; or I would, if I hadn't jumped right into the middle of this trick West before I knew what I was doing. Ket, what do you do to pa.s.s away the time? I don't see how you can have the nerve to live in an empty s.p.a.ce like this and purr!"

She got up then, looked into the kitchen and saw the paper on the table. This was new and vaguely promised some sort of break in the deadly monotony which she saw stretching endlessly before her.

Carrying the nameless cat in her arms, Lorraine went in her bare feet across the grimy, bare floor to the table and picked up the note. It read simply:

"Your brekfast is in the oven we wont be back till dark maby. Dont leave the ranch today. Yr loveing father."

Lorraine hugged the cat so violently that she choked off a purr in the middle. "'Don't leave the ranch to-day!' Ket, I believe it's going to be dangerous or something, after all."

She dressed quickly and went outside into the sunlight, the cat at her heels, the thrill of that one command filling the gray monotone of the hills with wonderful possibilities of adventure. Her father had made no objection before when she went for a ride. He had merely instructed her to keep to the trails, and if she didn't know the way home, to let the reins lie loose on Yellowjacket's neck and he would bring her to the gate.

Yellowjacket's instinct for direction had not been working that day, however. Lorraine had no sooner left the ranch out of sight behind her than she pretended that she was lost. Yellowjacket had thereupon walked a few rods farther and stopped, patiently indifferent to the location of his oats box. Lorraine had waited until his head began to droop lower and lower, and his switching at flies had become purely automatic. Yellowjacket was going to sleep without making any effort to find the way home. But since Lorraine had not told her father anything about it, his injunction could not have anything to do with the unreliability of the horse.

"Now," she said to the cat, "if three or four bandits would appear on the ridge, over there, and come tearing down into the immediate foreground, jump the gate and surround the house, I'd know this was the real thing. They'd want to make me tell where dad kept his gold or whatever it was they wanted, and they'd have me tied to a chair--and then, cut to Lone Morgan (that's a perfectly _wonderful_ name for the lead!) hearing shots and coming on a dead run to the rescue." She picked up the cat and walked slowly down the hard-trodden path to the stable. "But there aren't any bandits, and dad hasn't any gold or anything else worth stealing--Ket, if dad isn't a miser, he's _poor_!

And Lone Morgan is merely ashamed of the way I talked to him, and afraid I'll queer myself with the neighbours. No Western lead that _I_ ever saw would act like that. Why, he didn't even want to ride home with me, that day.

"And Bob Warfield and his Ford are incidents of the past, and not one soul at the Sawtooth seems to give a darn whether I'm in the country or out of it. Soon as they found out where I belonged, they brought me over here and dropped me and forgot all about me. And that, I suppose, is what they call in fiction the Western spirit!

"Dad looked exactly as if he'd opened the door to a book agent when I came. He--he _tolerates_ my presence, Ket! And Frank Johnson's pipe smells to high heaven, and I hate him in the house and 'the boys'--hmhm! The _boys_--Ket, it would be terribly funny, if I didn't have to stay here."

She had reached the corral and stood balancing the cat on a warped top rail, staring disconsolately at Yellowjacket, who stood in a far corner switching at flies and shamelessly displaying all the angularity of his bones under a yellowish hide with roughened hair that was shedding dreadfully, as Lorraine had discovered to her dismay when she removed her green corduroy skirt after riding him. Yellowjacket's lower lip sagged with senility or lack of spirit, Lorraine could not tell which.

"You look like the frontispiece in that horse-doctor book," she remarked, eyeing him with disfavour. "I can't say that comedy hide you've got improves your appearance. You'd be better peeled, I believe."

She heard a chuckle behind her and turned quickly, palm up to s.h.i.+eld her eyes from the straight, bright rays of the sun. Now here was a live man, after all, with his hat tilted down over his forehead, a cigarette in one hand and his reins in the other, looking at her and smiling.

"Why don't you peel him, just on a chance?" His smile broadened to a grin, but when Lorraine continued to look at him with a neutral expression in her eyes, he threw away his cigarette and abandoned with it his free-and-easy manner.

"You're Miss Hunter, aren't you? I rode over to see your father.

Thought I'd find him somewhere around the corral, maybe."

"You won't, because he's gone for the day. No, I don't know where."

"I--see. Is Mr Johnson anywhere about?"

"No, I don't believe anyone is anywhere about. They were all gone when I got up, a little while ago." Then, remembering that she did not know this man, and that she was a long way from neighbours, she added, "If you'll leave a message I can tell dad when he comes home."

"No-o--I'll ride over to-morrow or next day. I'm the man at Whisper.

You can tell him I called, and that I'll call again."

Still he did not go, and Lorraine waited. Some instinct warned her that the man had not yet stated his real reason for coming, and she wondered a little what it could be. He seemed to be watching her covertly, yet she failed to catch any telltale admiration for her in his scrutiny. She decided that his forehead was too narrow to please her, and that his eyes were too close together, and that the lines around his mouth were cruel lines and gave the lie to his smile, which was pleasant enough if you just looked at the smile and paid no attention to anything else in his face.

"You had quite an experience getting out here, they tell me," he observed carelessly; too carelessly, thought Lorraine, who was well schooled in the circ.u.mlocutions of delinquent tenants, agents of various sorts and those who crave small gossip of their neighbours.

"Heard you were lost up in Rock City all night."

Lorraine looked up at him, startled. "I caught a terrible cold," she said, laughing nervously. "I'm not used to the climate," she added guardedly.

The man fumbled in his pocket and produced smoking material. "Do you mind if I smoke?" he asked perfunctorily.

"Why, no. It doesn't concern me in the slightest degree." Why, she thought confusedly, must she always be reminded of that horrible place of rocks? What was it to this man where she had been lost?

"You must of got there about the time the storm broke," the man hazarded after a silence. "It's sure a bad place in a thunderstorm.

Them rocks draw lightning. Pretty bad, wasn't it?"

"Lightning is always bad, isn't it?" Lorraine tried to hold her voice steady. "I don't know much about it. We don't have thunderstorms to amount to anything, in Los Angeles. It sometimes does thunder there in the winter, but it is very mild."

With hands that trembled she picked the cat off the rail and started toward the house. "I'll tell dad what you said," she told him, glancing back over her shoulder. When she saw that he had turned his horse and was frankly following her to the house, her heart jumped wildly into her throat--judging by the feel of it.

"I'm plumb out of matches. I wonder if you can let me have some," he said, still speaking too carelessly to rea.s.sure her. "So you stuck it out in Rock City all through that storm! That's more than what I'd want to do."

She did not answer that, but once on the door-step Lorraine turned and faced him. Quite suddenly it came to her--the knowledge of why she did not like this man. She stared at him, her eyes wide and bright.

"Your hat's brown!" she exclaimed unguardedly. "I--I saw a man with a brown hat----"

He laughed suddenly. "If you stay around here long you'll see a good many," he said, taking off his hat and turning it on his hand before her. "This here hat I traded for yesterday. I had a gray one, but it didn't suit me. Too narrow in the brim. Brown hats are getting to be the style. If I can borrow half a dozen matches, Miss Hunter, I'll be going."

Lorraine looked at him again doubtfully and went after the matches. He thanked her, smiling down at her quizzically. "A man can get along without lots of things, but he's plumb lost without matches. You've maybe saved my life, Miss Hunter, if you only knew it."

She watched him as he rode away, opening the gate and letting himself through without dismounting. He disappeared finally around a small spur of the hill, and Lorraine found her knees trembling under her.

"Ket, you're an awful fool," she exclaimed fiercely. "Why did you let me give myself away to that man? I--I believe he _was_ the man. And if I really did see him, it wasn't my imagination at all. He saw me there, perhaps. Ket, I'm scared! I'm not going to stay on this ranch all alone. I'm going to saddle the family skeleton, and I'm going to ride till dark. There's something queer about that man from Whisper.

I'm afraid of him."

After awhile, when she had finished her breakfast and was putting up a lunch, Lorraine picked up the nameless gray cat and holding its head between her slim fingers, looked at it steadily. "Ket, you're the humanest thing I've seen since I left home," she said wistfully. "I _hate_ a country where horrible things happen under the surface and the top is just gray and quiet and so dull it makes you want to scream.

Lone Morgan lied to me. He lied--he lied!" She hugged the cat impulsively and rubbed her cheek absently against it, so that it began purring immediately.