The Forfeit Part 23

But her father remained wholly undeceived. He saw with a vision rendered doubly acute by perfect sympathy. He read through every smile to the tears lying behind it. He noted the change in the tone of the laugh. He missed nothing of the painful abstraction at odd moments when Nan believed she was wholly un.o.bserved. Nor did he misinterpret the language these things expressed. But for all his heart bled for the girl--and in his moments of solitude he bitterly cursed the woman who had robbed him of a son, and heaped every scathing epithet of his rough vocabulary upon the head of the man himself--he gave no sign that the fair world about them concealed shadowed corners, or that the life which was theirs was not one triumph of eternal delight. Thus was Nan helped, all unconscious of the help so given. So she was able to play the part her courage and gentleness of spirit had a.s.signed to her.

Presently a horseman came within sight, out of the northwest. It was the direction of Jeff's ranch house. A moment of deliberate scrutiny revealed the man's ident.i.ty. It was Lal Hobhouse, second foreman of the Obar, the man who, before the amalgamation, was Jeff's foreman.

Nan wondered what was bringing him in at this hour. Usually his visits to their headquarters were made in the evening when the work of the day was completed.

The man rode up and found Nan interestedly waiting to receive him.

There was a touch of anxiety in her tone as she greeted him.

"No trouble, Lal?" she demanded, as the man reined up his pony. The direct manner of the girl was largely the result of her new responsibilities.

Lal Hobhouse was a lean-faced specimen of sun-dried manhood. His appearance suggested all wires and indifference to the nicenesses of life. His long moustache drooped mournfully below his square chin.

And his fierce black eyes were full of a violent heat, rendered more savage for its bottling up during his long ride.

"Trouble?" Then he exploded with a furious oath, and his volcanic temper drowned the sunburn of his cheek under a living heat. "Them rustlers. Them lousy b.u.ms," he cried almost choking. "That bunch o'

yearlings--Shorthorn yearlings, Miss. Thirty of 'em--picked right out of the bush corrals where we'd got 'em for re-brandin'. Say, Bud--your father, Miss," he corrected himself. "He ain't around?"

But Nan's interest was in the work of the rustlers. Not in his final inquiry. Her pretty eyes were wide and hard with the anger his news had inspired.

"The Shorthorn yearlings, Lal?" she demanded. "Our prize stock?"

"Sure, Miss. Them. That's them. G.o.d blister their filthy carkises!

May they stew in h.e.l.l!"

He spat over his horse's shoulder as though to emphasize his furious disgust But his forcefulness was displeasing.

"Guess you best off-saddle," Nan said coolly. "Father'll be along right now. You'll need food. Say, what boys you got out there?" she inquired as the man slipped out of the saddle and began to unfasten the cinchas.

"Why, just the same four d.a.m.n fools, an'--Sikkem."

"And they're following up the trail?"

"Sure." The man flung off the saddle and his horse mouched away.

"Psha!" he cried, turning his fierce eyes upon Nan. "What's the use anyway?" His gesture was one of helpless disgust. "They're out. Bin out since daylight. An' I guess they've as much chance roundin' that crowd up as they would huntin' bugs in a hundred acre pasture.

Sikkem's about the brightest. But he ain't no sort o' good after a bunch of rustlers. I wouldn't trust him with a dead mule o' mine anyway. The boss hangs to him as if he was the on'y blamed cowpuncher east o' the mountains because he's handy. I don't like him, Miss, an'---- Say, how did them rustlers know 'bout them calves? Ther's two hundred head o' beeves out there, an' they pa.s.sed 'em right over fer the Shorthorns."

The man's argument and distrust of the man Sikkem made a deep impression on Nan. She had listened to some of the latter before. But Jeff's predilection for the dark-faced half Greaser had left her sceptical of Lal's opinion. Now, however, she was seriously impressed.

At that moment Bud himself rode up at a gallop, and behind him rode four of the home station boys. The pace at which he came was unusual, and Nan's troubled eyes promptly sought his face.

Instantly her greeting died upon her lips, which tightened ominously.

His usually steady gray eyes were hot and fierce, and his face was set.

The comfortable lines about his mouth were drawn hard and deep. She needed no word to tell her that further trouble was abroad.

He scarcely waited for his horse to come to a halt. He was out of the saddle in a moment, and his great figure towered before the foreman, whom he took in with an angry stare.

"What's brought you in?" he demanded, with a dangerous calm. Then the calm broke before his storm of feeling. "Don't tell me ther's trouble around your layout, too," he cried, without waiting for reply. Then he turned on Nan, who was still on the veranda. "Say, Nan, they done it.

The rotten swines have done it. They shot 'Jock' up!"

"The Highland bull?" Nan gasped.

"Yes. That's it." Bud laughed furiously. "That bull I imported last fall for three thousand dollars," he went on, turning back to the foreman. "They shot him up and drove off his twenty-five cows from the Coyote Bluff pastures. Dirty spite an' meanness. The white-livered sc.u.m!" Then with a fierce oath the usually even-tempered Bud hurled his wrath upon the waiting man. "Gorl darn it, you're standin' around like a barbed wire fence post. What in h.e.l.l's brought you around now?

What they done your way?"

His manner roused the foreman to a soreness he wasn't slow in showing.

"Jest thirty Shorthorn yearlings," he said without any attempt to soften the blow. "Jest thirty--prize stock."

The announcement had an unlooked-for effect. Where Nan expected another furious display Bud remained silent. His eyes were wide as they stared into the foreman's. But no word came. Then, after a few moments, he began to laugh and Nan understood. She felt it was either that, or--her father would break something.

"Well, I go plumb to h.e.l.l!" he cried at last. And Nan felt relieved at the sound of his voice.

The next moment Lal Hobhouse was pouring out his story with a redundant selection from his choicest vocabulary of abusive epithet, which was impartially divided between the rustlers and the cowhands under his charge. Nan waited patiently, her eyes studying her father's face.

But whatever his feelings he permitted them no further display, and, at the conclusion of the story, instead of offering comment, or reverting to his own discoveries, he turned to his daughter with a smile.

"Food on, Nan?" he inquired, in his easy way. "Guess I'm needin'

food--pretty bad. Maybe we'll feel better after."

Then he turned to the men who stood around.

"Git on down to the bunkhouse an' feed, boys. One o' you grab my plug.

After, we'll get around out with Lal here. I----"

He broke off as Nan darted away down the veranda. The mail man had just clattered up to the front of the house, and she had gone to meet him.

Bud pa.s.sed his horse on to one of the men, and, with heavy strides, clanking with the rattle of his heavy Mexican spurs, his leather chapps creaking as he moved, he mounted the veranda and made his way into the house.

Nan entered the parlor with her hands full of mail. The meal was laid ready, and a colored girl was setting the chairs in their places.

"I'll jest get a clean up, Nan," her father said, without a single trace of his recent display. "Guess I'm full of dust."

He pa.s.sed through the little room like some overwhelming mammoth. He seemed altogether too vast for the small home, which had never grown with his other worldly possessions. Nan watched him go. Then she laid the mail down on a side table and began to sort it out.

There were a number of letters for Jeff. These she set carefully aside in a pile by themselves for redirection. There were several addressed in girlish hands to herself. For Bud there were only a few. She glanced over the superscription of each. One or two were easily recognized business letters. There was a paper, however, addressed in Jeff's hand, and a letter of considerable bulk. These were what she had been looking for. She pushed the bunkhouse mail aside, and regarded reflectively the outer covering of Jeff's letter to her father.

It was not the first he had received from Jeff during the four weeks since their return home. But its bulk this time was out of the ordinary, and the carefully folded news sheet was more than interesting. It awakened every doubt, every fear to which she had been a prey.

The rapid beating of her heart left her with a choking sensation.

Vivid imagination was at work, and she was reading in fancy under those covers that which, sooner or later, she knew she must read in fact.

These were bad moments for the girl, moments which found her again struggling with that self which left her little enough peace. Perhaps the struggle lasted five minutes. Perhaps less. At any rate it seemed an eternity to Nan before the hired girl announced the meal.

Nan sighed as she moved from the side table on which the mail was spread out.

"Give father a call," she said, and took up a position at the open French window.