Desert Conquest Part 9

"Don't like him; he's too smooth. Looked me square in the eye, and told me to be careful with sidehill ditches, and so on, just as if it didn't affect him at all. Too innocent for me. I had a notion to tell him he wasn't fooling me a little bit."

"H'm!" said Sleeman. "Well, I give Casey credit for being a good man.

He has a big stake here--owns a lot of land besides his ranch. It's make or break with him."

"Then I'm sorry for him. He had a girl with him--McCrae her name is.

Who's she?"

"Her father owns Talapus Ranch. It's the biggest and best here. Good people, the McCraes."

"And I suppose Dunne's going to marry her? Is that it?"

"I never heard so. But if he is I don't blame him; she's all right, that girl."

Farwell grunted. He had rather liked Sheila's looks, but, being a man of violent prejudices, and disliking Dunne instinctively, he found it easy to dislike his friends. "I'll tell you what I'm going to do," he announced. "I'm going to put it up to these fellows straight the first chance I get that we don't care a hang for anything they may do. If they want trouble they can come a-running."

"Well," Sleeman commented, "of course, I'm here to sell land. The company is my boss, and naturally I back its play. But my personal opinion is that it would have been better to have bought those fellows out, even at fancy prices, than to ride over them roughshod. They're sore now, and you can't wonder at it. If I were you I'd go easy--just as easy as I could."

"Nonsense!" snorted Farwell. "That's what that old fool of a mick down at the station told me. How the devil does the company happen to have such an old fossil on the job?"

"Quilty's a left-over from construction days. He's been here ever since steel was laid. They say he averted a bad smash once by sheer nerve or pure Irish luck. Anyway, he has a sort of guarantee of his job for life. Not a bad old boy when you get to know him."

"He ought to be fired, and a younger man put in his place," said Farwell. "He talks too much. Good Lord! He's like an endless record!"

"Pshaw! What do you care?" said Sleeman. "He's better than a talking machine in this place. Well, come over to the hotel, and afterward I'll run you out to the camp."

CHAPTER VI

Sheila McCrae and Beaver Boy and Casey Dunne and s.h.i.+ner drifted through the golden afternoon just ahead of a dust cloud of their own making.

Sheila rode astride, in the manner of a country where side saddles are almost unknown. Her stiff-brimmed pony hat was pushed back because of the heat. Sometimes she rode with it in her hand, careless of the dust which powdered her ma.s.ses of dark, neatly coiled hair. The action revealed her keen, cleanly cut features, so strongly resembling her brother's. But the resemblance was softened by femininity; for young McCrae's visage was masculine and hawklike, and under excitement fierce, even predatory; while his sister's, apart from s.e.x, was more refined, more thoughtful, with a grave sweetness underlying the firmness.

The two were unusually silent as the horses kicked off mile after mile.

Sheila roused herself first, and looked at her companion. Because his hat was pulled low she could see but little of his face save the mouth and chin; but the former was compressed and the latter thrust out at a decidedly aggressive angle.

"A penny for them, Casey!"

"Take 'em free," he returned. "I was wondering whether we had any chance to beat this game, and I can't see it. The bank roll against us is too big. It will get our little pile in the end, just as sure as fate."

"Well, you can't help that, can you?" she commented sharply. "What do you want to do--lie down and quit? You wouldn't do that. Brace up!"

"That's the talk," he acknowledged. "That's what I need now and then.

Perhaps I get a pessimistic view when I'm trying for an impartial one."

"What do you think of this Farwell person?"

"Farwell represents the railway in more ways than one. He takes what he wants--if he's strong enough. He's some bully--and so is the railway.

But he isn't a bluff--and neither is the railway. He's had experience--plenty of it--and, on a guess, I should say that he is sent down here to take care of any trouble that may start. He is hostile already. You can see it."

"Yes." And after a moment's silence she asked: "What is going to start, Casey?"

"I don't know exactly."

"Of course you know. Dad won't say a word, and Sandy makes wise remarks about girls who try to b.u.t.t into men's affairs. I'm left out, and it's the first time _that_ has ever happened to me. Nice, isn't it?"

"No, it's confoundedly annoying. All the same, Sheila, they're quite right."

"But why? I'm no silly kid--no chattering, gossipy young lady. I have as much interest in the ranch as Sandy. I know as much about it and the work of it as he does, and I do my share of it. Even Mr. Dunne has occasionally honoured me by asking for my opinion. And now I'm left out like a child. It isn't fair."

"From that angle it looks rather raw," he acknowledged. "Still, it's better that you shouldn't know. In that case you can't be forced to give evidence against your own people and your friends."

She glanced at him, a little startled. "What rot, Casey!"

"Not a bit of it. Anything we can do must be against the law. Suspicion will be directed at us from the outset. You must see that."

"Yes, I see it," she a.s.sented thoughtfully. "Very well, I'll be good to the extent of not asking questions. But you can't expect me to be deaf and blind."

"Of course not," he a.s.sented and began to talk of the ranch work. She listened, making occasional shrewd comments, offering suggestions which showed that she understood such matters thoroughly.

"Why shouldn't we ride around by Chakchak?" she asked. "I haven't seen it for a month, and there's plenty of day left. And then I can go on to Talapus by myself."

"Trying to shake me?"

"No. But why should you trail along with me? I've ridden all over the country alone. I do it every day."

"Hush, Sheila! Let me tell you a secret. I ride with you because I like to."

"Oh, blarney! That's what it is to have a mick ancestry. I suppose I'll have to own up that if I didn't like you to ride with me I wouldn't let you do it."

Casey grinned. Their mutual liking was genuine and so far unsentimental. They were of the same breed--the breed of the pioneer--and their hearts held the same seldom-voiced but deeply rooted love for the same things; the great, sun-washed s.p.a.ces winnowed by the clean winds, the rosy dawns, violet dusks and nights when the earth scents hung heavy, almost palpable, clinging to the nostrils, the living things of fur and feather bright of eye and wary of habit. But most of all unconsciously they loved and cherished the feeling of room, of s.p.a.ce in which to live and breathe and turn freely.

"The present time being inopportune, and s.h.i.+ner's temper too uncertain for a further avowal of my sentiments," he said, "I suggest that we turn off here and hit a few high spots for Chakchak. Stir up that slothful cayuse of yours. Maybe there's a lope left in him somewhere.

See if you can comb it out with a quirt."

"I like your nerve!" she exclaimed. "Beaver Boy can run the heart out of that old buzzard-head of yours and come in dry-haired. Come on, or take my dust!"

The hoofbeats drummed dull thunder from the brown earth, and the dust cloud behind drew out and lengthened with the speed of their going.

Side by side they swept through the silent land, breasting small rises, swooping down slopes, breathing their horses whenever they came to heavier ascents.

Sometimes as they rode knee touched knee. It gave Casey Dunne a strange but comfortable feeling of comrades.h.i.+p. He looked at the woman beside him, appreciating her firm, easy seat in the stock saddle, her management of Beaver Boy, now eager to prove his prowess against the buckskin's. He noted the rich colour lying beneath the tan of the smooth cheeks, the rounded brown throat, the poise of the lithe, pliant body and the watchful tension of the strong arms and shoulders as the big bay fought hard for his head and a brief freedom to use his full strength and speed in one mad heartbreaking burst. But most of all he noted and was attracted by the level, direct, fearless stare beneath the slightly drawn brows into the distances.

A brown girl in a brown land! It came to Casey Dunne, who was imaginative within the strict seclusion of his inner self, that she typified their land, the West, in youth, in fearlessness, in potentialities yet lying fallow, unawakened, in fruitfulness to come.

What of the vagrant touch of the woman, the gold of the day, the clean, dry air and the glory of motion, the chord of romance within him vibrated and began to sing.

It invested her momentarily with a new quality, a new personality. She was no longer the Sheila McCrae he had known so well. She was the Spirit of the Land, a part of it--she was Sheila of the West; and her heritage was plain and mountain, gleaming lake and rus.h.i.+ng river, its miles numbered by thousands, its acres by millions--a land for a new nation.

How many Sheilas, he wondered--young, strong, clean of blood, straight of limb--had ridden since the beginning of time into the new lands, and borne their part in peopling them. Fifty years before, her prototypes had ridden beside the line of crawling, creaking prairie schooners across the great plains toward the setting sun; little more than fifty years before that they had ridden down through the notches of the blue Alleghenies into the promised land of Kain-tuck-ee, the Dark and b.l.o.o.d.y Ground, beside buckskin-clad, deckard-armed frontiersmen. Perhaps, centuries before that, her ancestresses had ridden with burly, skin-clad warriors out of the great forests of northern Europe down to the pleasant weaker south. But surely she was the peer of any of them--this woman riding knee to knee with him, the sloping sun in her clear, brown eyes, and the warm, sweet winds kissing her cheeks!