Brand Blotters Part 26

"Said he had private reasons for not pus.h.i.+ng the case. I didn't ask him what they were."

This was all she could get out of him. It was less than she had hoped.

Still, it was something. She knew definitely what Bellamy had done.

Wherefore she sat down to write him a note of thanks. It took her an hour and eight sheets of paper before she could complete it to her satisfaction. Even then the result was not what she wanted. She wished she knew how he felt about it, so that she could temper it to the right degree of warmth or coolness. Since she did not know, she erred on the side of stiffness and made her message formal.

"Mr. Thomas L. Morse, "Monte Cristo Mine.

"Dear Sir:

"Father and I feel that we ought to thank you for your considerate forbearance in a certain matter you know of. Believe me, sir, we are grateful.

"Very respectfully, "Melissy Lee."

She could not, however, keep herself from one touch of sympathy, and as a postscript she navely added:

"I'm sorry about the sheep."

Before mailing it she carried this letter to her father. Neither of them had ever referred to the other about what each knew of the affair of the robbery. More than once it had been on the tip of Champ Lee's tongue to speak of it, but it was not in his nature to talk out what he felt, and with a sigh he had given it up. Now Melissy came straight to the point.

"I've been writing a letter to Mr. Morse, dad, thanking him for not having me arrested."

Lee shot at her a glance of quick alarm.

"Does he know about it, honey?"

"Yes. Jack Flatray found out the whole thing and told him. He was very insistent on dropping it, Mr. Flatray says."

"You say Jack found out all about it, honey?" repeated Lee in surprise.

He was seated in a big chair on the porch, and she nestled on one arm of it, rumpled his gray hair as she had always done since she had been a little girl, kissed him, and plunged into her story.

He heard her to the end without a word, but she noticed that he gripped the chair hard. When she had finished he swept her into his arms and broke down over her, calling her the pet names of her childhood.

"Honey-bird ... Dad's little honey-bird ... I'm that ashamed of myse'f.

'Twas the whisky did it, lambie. Long as I live I'll nevah touch it again.

I'll sweah that befo' G.o.d. All week you been packin' the troubles I heaped on you, precious, and afteh you-all saved me from being a criminal...."

So he went on, spending his tempestuous love in endearments and caresses, and so together they afterward talked it out and agreed to send the letter she had written.

But Lee was not satisfied with her atonement. He could not rest to let it go at that, without expressing his own part in it to Bellamy. Next day he rode up to the mine, and found its owner in workman's slops just stepping from the cage. If Bellamy were surprised to see him, no sign of it reached his face.

"If you'll wait a minute till I get these things off, I'll walk up to the cabin with you, Mr. Lee," he said.

"I reckon you got my daughter's letter," said Lee abruptly as he strode up the mountainside with his host.

"Yes, I got it an hour ago."

"I be'n and studied it out, Mr. Morse. I couldn't let it go at that, and so I reckoned I'd jog along up hyer and tell you the whole story."

"That's as you please, Mr. Lee. I'm quite satisfied as it is."

The rancher went on as if he had not heard. "'Course I be'n holding a grudge at you evah since you took up this hyer claim. I expect that rankles with me most of the time, and when I take to drinking seems to me that mine still belongs to me. Well, I heerd tell of that s.h.i.+pment you was making, and I sets out to git it, for it ce'tainly did seem to belong to me. Understand, I wasn't drunk, but had be'n settin' pretty steady to the bottle for several days. Melissy finds it out, no matter how, and undertakes to keep me out of trouble. She's that full of sand, she nevah once thought of the danger or the consequences. Anyhow, she meant to git the bullion back to you afteh the thing had blown over."

"I haven't doubted that a moment since I knew she did it," said Bellamy quietly.

"Glad to hear it. I be'n misjudgin' you, seh, but you're a white man afteh all. Well, you know the rest of the story: how she held up the stage, how Jack drapped in befo' our tracks were covered, how smart he worked the whole thing out, and how my little gyurl confessed to him to save me."

"Yes, I know all that."

"What kind of a figure do I make in this? First off, I act like a durn fool, and she has to step in to save me. Then I let her tote the worry of it around while I ride off to Mesa. When Jack runs me down, she takes the blame again. To finish up with, she writes you a letter of thanks, jes' as if the whole fault was hers."

The old soldier selected a smooth rock and splashed it with tobacco juice before he continued with rising indignation against himself.

"I'm a fine father for a gyurl like that, ain't I? Up to date I always had an idee I was some sort of a man, but dad gum it! I cayn't see it hyer. To think of me lettin' my little gyurl stand the consequences of my meanness. No, Mr. Morse, that's one too much for Champ Lee. He's nevah going to touch another drop of whisky long as he lives."

"Glad to hear it. That's a square amend to make, one she will appreciate."

"So I took a _pasear_ up hyer to explain this, and to thank you for yore kindness. Fac' is, Mr. Morse, it would have jest about killed me if anything had happened to my little 'Lissie. I want to say that if you had a-be'n her brother you couldn't 'a' be'n more decent."

"There was nothing else to do. It happens that I am in her debt. She saved my life once. Besides, I understood the motives for her action when she broke the law, and I honored them with all my heart. Flatray felt just as I did about it. So would any right-thinking man."

"Well, you cayn't keep me from sayin' again that you're a white man, seh,"

the other said with a laugh behind which the emotion of tears lay near.

"That offer of a compromise is still open, Mr. Lee."

The Southerner shook his grizzled head. "No, I reckon not, Mr. Morse.

Understand, I got nothin' against you. The feud is wiped out, and I'll make you no mo' trouble. But it's yore mine, and I don't feel like taking charity. I got enough anyhow."

"It wouldn't be charity. I've always felt as if you had a moral claim on an interest in the 'Monte Cristo.' If you won't take this yourself, why not let me make out the papers to Miss Lee? You would feel then that she was comfortably fixed, no matter what happened to you."

"Well, I'll lay it befo' her. Anyhow, we're much obliged to you, Mr.

Morse. I'll tell you what, seh," he added as an after-thought. "You come down and talk it over with 'Lissie. If you can make her see it that way, good enough."

When Champ Lee turned his bronco's head homeward he was more at peace with the world than he had been for a long time. He felt that he would be able to look his little girl in the face again. For the first time in a week he felt at one with creation. He rode into the ranch plaza humming "Dixie."

On the day following that of Lee's call, the mine-owner saddled his mare and took the trail to the half-way house. It was not until after the stage had come and gone that he found the chance for a word with Melissy alone.

"Your father submitted my proposition, did he?" Bellamy said by way of introducing the subject.

"Let's take a walk on it. I haven't been out of the house to-day," she answered with the boyish downrightness sometimes uppermost in her.

Calling Jim, she left him in charge of the store, caught up a Mexican sombrero, and led the way up the trail to a grove of live-oaks perched on a bluff above. Below them stretched the plain, fold on fold to the blue horizon edge. Close at hand clumps of cactus, thickets of mesquit, together with the huddled adobe buildings of the ranch, made up the details of a scene possible only in the sunburnt territory. The palpitating heat quivered above the hot brown sand. No life stirred in the valley except a circling buzzard high in the sky, and the tiny moving speck with its wake of dust each knew to be the stage that had left the station an hour before.

Melissy, unconscious of the charming picture she made, stood upon a rock and looked down on it all.

"I suppose," she said at last slowly, "that most people would think this pretty desolate. But it's a part of me. It's all I know." She broke off and smiled at him. "I had a chance to be civilized. Dad wanted to send me East to school, but I couldn't leave him."

"Where were you thinking of going?"

"To Denver."