USA > California > Sonoma County > Casa Grande : a California pastoral > Part 6
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Bailey walked close to the girl. There must have been desperation in the sweep of her skirt, for he could wait no longer on fate. He reached softly for her hand; with a nice tact she avoided his clasp. Where the path narrowed they came closer, and he sought to slip his arm in the hollow
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of her waist. She gently forced his hand to her side.
It was a new game they were playing-a panto- mime in the dark, but glaringly eloquent. Their hearts were painfully throbbing, his with unspoken desire, hers with a new distress. A month ago she would have told him to quit, and had he persisted she could unmistakably have emphasised her mean- ing. Now something fine and sweet, that budded only yesterday, kept her from speaking, but endowed her body with a gracious language.
While the man did not understand all her mean- ing, he caught sufficient to restrain him, and he walked back with her as silent as he was unhappy. At the gate his caution left him and he grasped her wrists. She met his gaze steadfastly and waited for him to speak.
"It's Miller !" he breathed, at last, bursting with his own perplexities.
She twisted her wrists in his clasp, but he held on firmly. "Let's go in." The gladness and welcome had gone from her voice.
Even then he did not realise, but took her dumb-
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ness as an admission of his charge, and he ex- claimed : "You've pretended all along to hate him !"
She wrenched herself free, and unconsciously brushed her fingers over where he had gripped her, as if his touch had soiled. When she had somewhat controlled the heaving of her breast, she replied, her voice still shaking :
"I've never known him to do a cowardly thing !"
Her quietness made the emphasis she had thrown on "him" show the man beside her what he had been guilty of. It flashed on him how justly she had spoken, how brutal he must appear to her, and he dismally confessed :
"You're right-I didn't know. But you've been in my thoughts for weeks, months-slipping, slip- ping away. Now I've lost you. I'm not fit to be here! Good-bye, Belle-sweetheart !"
She impulsively clung to him. "Don't go to- night. Wait till morning. I've been hasty-harsh. Won't you come in?"
"No, girl. Let me go. The pity of it is, you are right; I know you're right !"
"I can't let you go this way, Sam. Wait till to-
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morrow. We'll both see our duty clearer in the day- light-after a night's rest."
He yielded, unconscious that her spirit usually dominated his-wherein lay her advantage. Therein also lay her'danger. She was undeveloped as yet, but when she should be tried in the heat of life's endeavour she would prove to be immeasurably his superior. Between now and then, in the callowness of inexperience, she most likely would choose a man who could be dominated, rather than one who would dominate.
A joyless group gathered in the little cabin, wait- ing for bedtime. Bailey was struggling to readjust himself. He long had felt that the girl was growing away from him, but when he had been able to put aside feeling reason assured him that she could do no better than marry him. The question of adapta- bility had not challenged him. He had taken it as a matter of course, for his soul was not clamorous. Now, however, he had wakened to the reality, and life was standing still. The coveted rose-garden was neither for him nor for her neighbour.
Mrs. Clark studiously observed the two young
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people. For some time she had regretted the change in Belle's manner toward Bailey, and she easily divined the cause. There was no doubt of the sheriff. He was one of them, and he had made no secret of his regard. But the other man-with the air and tastes of a gentleman-what were his intentions? She could not reason it out, but her traditions, her intuitions, warned her from his familiarities.
And yet a half-formed thought persisted in her dreaming fancies. What if he should make Belle his wife! The possibilities, the delight, were beyond imagining. Such unions had been known-even in her humble circle-and why not Belle? Great as was her maternal pride, it had some justification in the girl's graces, her resoluteness and her sweetness. All night long the mother dreamed of it.
Next morning was an auspicious dawning of bird- songs and balmy odours and flooding sunlight. The young people were self-possessed and apparently merry again, alert to avoid any reference to the hap- penings of last night-even Miller's name being carefully ignored.
Wash came late to breakfast. He had ridden to
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Casa Grande with the message that a cow had calved outside the wall near their place. As soon as there came an opening in the somewhat flippant talk, the matter that Bailey and Belle had tried all morning to avoid was introduced by Wash.
The subject of most interest to the boy was the man he admired above all others and that man's doings; so Bailey was told of the attack on the In- dian harvesters. His mother twisted it into a different story. Then Bailey repeated what he had heard, and all laughed at the numerous contra- dictions.
The visitor tilted back his chair and said, good- humouredly : "We haven't yet heard the true story. The settlers don't tell it, and Miller won't."
"No, Miller won't," echoed Mrs. Clark. "If it hadn't been for fear of his money they'd have broken him in two!"
"Who told you that?" demanded Belle, with un- necessary warmth.
"Good enough authority," evasively replied her mother.
The girl laughed genially. "I'll tell you what he
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did. Single-handed, he whipped six of them out of the field."
"How do you know?" severely questioned her mother, pushing back from the table.
The answer came deliberately. "I stood on the hill this side of the big house and saw the affair from beginning to end. Talk about his being afraid ! It's childish. He's a match for all of us-any time -day or night."
They looked at her in surprise as she rose from the table and flung back the heavy coil of hair, but no one challenged her.
"I wish I could have heard what they said," she continued, "but I was only close enough just to cover his heart with the sight of my rifle."
"Why didn't you shoot?" banteringly asked Bailey.
She laughed again, with a shrug of such utter un- concern that the sheriff smiled. She said that if she had shot there would be no one to hate, and it is very convenient to make some one the butt of bad temper. She said it quite cheerfully.
The speech nettled Bailey-the words, her man-
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ner, her tone, he could not say which, perhaps all combined-and he abruptly bade them good-bye. Belle went with him to the stable and waited to see him off. When his horse was saddled he held out his hand to her. They had been a long time silent.
"Good-bye," he said. "You'll not see me soon."
She let her hand lie in his, and dejectedly replied : "You mustn't desert me, Sam, my only friend-the one who understands me."
"What's the use? You don't care."
"I do. As much as for any one."
"It must be more than any one. Say it, sweet- heart," he coaxed, as he put his arm about her.
She yielded to the pressure, but her eyes regarded him wistfully, and she slowly shook her head.
"Good-bye," he repeated, and swiftly bent to kiss her ; his lips fell on her colourless cheek.
He flung himself into his saddle and went straight to the road, across the bed of the creek, now dry, and up the grade beyond, never once looking back.
The girl remained where he had left her, and gazed after him, with drooping arms and hands clasped hopelessly.
CHAPTER IX
I RAISED THEE UP
T HE cow that Wash had seen in Dry Creek was one of the most valuable of Miller's herd, and the ranchero himself rode out to fetch her home.
The year before, she had wandered to the same place, and her owner now had little trouble in finding her and the calf at her side, milk-white, with a few red splotches, in shape a miniature of the cow. As the man walked toward them the youngster stood with tail straight out, and gazed big-eyed at this strange animal approaching without protest from its dam. It was still too wobbly to drive down hill, so Miller picked it up and carried it from the rocky nest where he had found it.
Near the bottom of the decline they met Belle with a rifle. She was clad in the half-Indian costume, with a slash of red here and there, that Bailey had
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admired. The man with the calf in his arms beheld the girl with pleasure, and had it not been for the bridle lines of the horse he was leading he would have fallen when he stumbled.
"Careful, Mr. Miller," she exclaimed.
He set down his burden and wiped the sweat from his face, his eyes twinkling as he asked, "Are you punning?"
She frowned slightly, not comprehending.
"I didn't understand if you said 'careful' or 'calf- full.' "
"Mr. Miller!" She spoke the words with a fall- ing accent, but her eyes caught the twinkle in his. "I didn't know that men said such things-only boys and girls, I thought."
He contentedly fanned himself with his hat, a figure good to look at, clad roughly, but appropri- ately-dark-blue from hat to foot, excepting black top-boots, and a red silk kerchief knotted with studied care about his throat. There must have been a lurking consciousness in the minds of both that their personal appearances this morning were not entirely a matter of chance.
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At any rate, he was glad to see the friendly smile on her face, although she had spoken deprecatingly of his attempt to make her a punster, and he good- humouredly admitted that he still was something of a kid.
She looked approvingly at him, then at the calf, and remarked that he had carried this cow's calf last year the same way.
Her speech was unconscious, but it disclosed that she had observed him and his doings long before she had given any sign of interest. She must have caught the feeling in his glance, for her lids drooped, and she shouldered her rifle.
They sauntered behind the slow-going calf and its anxious dam and led the horse. Belle opened the gate in the stone wall and went a little way with them along the trail to Casa Grande. She proved a gentle herder, very patient with the halting calf, and wise in animals' ways. He wanted her to go on with them, but she had her own task, and struck off across the intervening hills.
She wound among the shady oaks, and seemed to glide across the velvet turf ablaze with wildflowers.
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As long as she was in sight his gaze admiringly fol- lowed her. Never before had he beheld so lithe and supple a tread. Diana might have walked like her, perhaps looked like her, had the girl carried bow and arrows instead of rifle.
A muffled bawling in a nearby thicket rudely brought him back to earth. Some beast must be after his cattle, and he mounted and galloped to where the sound came from. In a manzanita grove up the hillside lay a yearling steer under the claws of a grizzly bear. In front of the bear, and out of his reach, stood a young bull, the most promising son of Mad Anthony-Cinnabar, they had named him-a bloody gash in the shoulder telling of his spirit. The grizzly also bore marks of battle-one of his eyes swollen shut. He must have been tearing the throat of the steer when the bull unawares charged and struck him. Cinnabar's horns were too short to inflict serious damage, although his com- pact frame and swelling neck could deal a fearful blow.
The bull was too young to fight for the lust of combat, as did his sire, and the blood slowly drip-
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ping from the gash was evidence of its painfulness. Yet he stood lashing his ribs with his tail, pawed the dust in defiance, and cautiously awaited an opening to strike again. The bear, fearful of another blow, crouched over the steer and growled savagely.
Miller was without arms or weapons, save his heavy coiled riata. The steer was hurt beyond mend- ing, and the man's care now was to get Cinnabar away from danger. He rode close to the combat- ants, his mount almost unmanageable from fear of the bear, and brought down the rawhide rope on the bull, which immediately charged at the horse and drove him into the brush.
The ranchero returned to the rescue, this time more warily. Before he could spur the trembling horse close enough to swing again at the bull, the cow, which had been left in the hollow below, at- tracted by the bellowing of the wounded steer, dashed excitedly through the undergrowth, struck the bear in the back and hurled him headlong. As she wheeled to strike again, the bawling of her off- spring, left alone in an unfamiliar spot, fell on her ears, and, instead of charging the bear, she galloped
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past Miller and disappeared in the direction she had entered.
The grizzly, furious with rage and pain, regained his footing in time to see the cow pass Miller. The brute's fighting blood was stirred, and he plunged after her. Miller, now between the two, wheeled and fled, the bear following. The rider kept easily out of reach and led the pursuer toward Casa Grande, where he was sure of Manuel and his rifle.
The ranchero held his mount as close as he dared to the grizzly, for fear the brute would return to his unfinished dinner and the young bull. Pursuer and pursued kept steadily on their way, the horse turning his head first to one side and then the other, timidly watchful. The bear lumbered awkwardly over the ground, but with surprising swiftness.
They had reached the level of the valley, and Miller guided the horse to skirt the base of the hill. Both were watching the bear more closely than they noticed the trail, as he now was running easier. A dry water course lay ahead, and before the horse ob- served it he made a false step and fell.
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Miller was stunned for an instant; then, like a flash, he realised his danger and tried to rise. The terrible pain in his leg warned him that something was wrong. Pull and twist as he would, he could not withdraw his foot from under the horse, which he struck a stinging blow with the riata; the animal tried to get up, but could not. It lay with feet up the rising ground, and its plunging and straining served only to move its body farther on the rider's leg and the more securely pin him down.
It was of no use. The grizzly saw the plight of the fugitives and came swifter; the man could hear the swish of claws cutting into the turf. The thought that, after all his dangers, he must die like some wild thing torn by a fierce beast, bitterly smote him, but he lay back quickly, his face turned from the sullen brute, now almost on him. He seemed to catch the quick breathing of the bear ; he thought each oncom- ing footstep the last, and his nerves were tensely keyed for the final plunge, the cruel teeth.
What sound was that? A crack had rent the air- then silence, as if nature itself stopped to listen. Could it have been a rifle shot? Miller painfully
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turned. Not ten feet away lay the bear, dead. The man twisted his body to gaze behind him, up the hill. Her moccasined tread was too light to be heard, but he caught the flutter of her skirt. And then she was at his side, her gun ready if the grizzly moved. The thick folds of her blue waist failed to conceal the heaving of her breast, and in her glance were concern and relief.
"I knew it was you!" he exclaimed, ineffectually pulling to free his leg. "One more nail to crucify me with."
She waited before she replied, her eyes frankly turned to his. "No, I don't care enough to crucify you. But I'll help you up." She laid the rifle on the ground and caught the horse by the bit.
"Easy, Belle," he called, as the animal began to plunge.
"Your leg's broken !" she cried.
"No, I think not-I hope not." Again he tried to move. "His whole weight seems to be on my foot, though. Will you fasten him so he can't plunge?"
She deftly bound the riata about the horse's legs,
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and when finished he was as securely tied as any vaquero could fasten him. "Now I'll have to pry him off. And not a stick in sight." She picked up her rifle and drew out the load, shoved the long, heavy barrel under the horse's flank and pulled up on the stock. The weight lifted a little from Miller's leg.
"That's good. Try once more."
Again and again she pried. His heavy boot ap- peared to catch in the animal's ribs, preventing the man from drawing it clear. Once more she pushed the barrel under the horse; one more lift, and, with a twist and a snap, the cramped leg was withdrawn.
"There goes my rifle!" She regretfully held up the broken stock.
"Never mind. There are half a dozen on the wall in my room. Take your choice."
She slowly shook her head, and told him that it had been her father's trusted weapon. There wasn't its equal in the county.
He sat near the quiet horse, rubbed his freed leg, and smiled at this trace of fetichism. "Give it to me, then ; I'll have a new stock put on it."
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"We're under enough obligations," she answered, with a touch of bitterness.
"Not after to-day. The crack of your rifle changed all that."
"Pooh !" she exclaimed, in some confusion. "Be- cause I shot the bear? For all we know, he would have been satisfied with the horse, especially if you had kept still."
"Any way you please, Belle. Just the same, the debt can be repaid only one way. A life for a life, you know."
"Let's call it quits, then. The world is wide enough for both of us." She paused as if consider- ing what to say next. "You are good and kind, in a way. But I never can forgive your taking our home!"
"I offered to sell the land," he argued.
She still insisted that the land was not his to sell; that the Government had done wrong in deciding against them; that he was broad and liberal enough to have righted the wrong.
"If we had been in your class, you'd have made us a deed, and said nothing about pay."
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He gazed curiously at her, to divine, if possible, the exact purport of the rebuke, but her face was placid. "Do you think the women of my class barter affections for houses and lands ?"
She answered that she wasn't thinking at all of affections, but of rights.
"Then you think my sense of justice runs to classes ?" His tone expressed amusement.
She bent over, picked up the barrel of her rifle and fitted the broken parts together, but did not answer.
"I'll not defend my actions," he said, with a sigh. "I thought I was doing right-I still think so." He absently threw a handful of earth on the motionless horse beside him. "You'll have to take me as you find me, Belle-very human, with no sign of wings. For which I'm thankful, as I want to live."
The man's self-forgetfulness moved her. She knew that he was in pain, but not a word betrayed it. She knew he needed help, but rather than ask it he would suffer. Her old resentment gave way for a time and she offered to help him up.
He shook his head, but the light of comradeship was in his eyes. He rose stiffly, took the rifle-barrel
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from her and leaned on it. "No bones broken," he said, as he painfully twisted his foot. "Now we must get the horse up." He limped a step or two, but his evident distress made it plain that he could not walk.
She took the loose end of the riata that bound the animal, stood beside him, and pulled with all her strength ; over he rolled, his feet now lower than his body, and as soon as untied he sprang nimbly up and snorted at the dead bear.
"He fared better than you," she observed, as she led the steed to the cripple and helped him mount.
Miller eased himself in the saddle and imperi- ously held out his hand. "Now give me your rifle- barrel and stock."
She picked up the broken parts, but did not offer them to him. The note of command in his voice nettled her, for it expressed superiority. Instead, it was prompted by a feeling of comradeship, which had grown rapidly since her return from jail; and had he not just passed through so severe an ordeal his tones would have been less harsh.
"Please," he gently urged, as she turned away.
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"Good-bye," she answered, and walked stiffly to- ward Dry Creek.
He looked after her with surprise; then resent- ment; then regret. The past weeks he had been pic- turing her as sweet and fine, but she was hard and coarse. She must know that she had placed him under a lasting obligation, and she scorned his slightest expression of gratitude. He had not yet learned that the very intensity of her emotions often made her cloak them under an assumed rudeness.
With a sense of depression he turned toward Casa Grande. And yet Belle, in his direst need, had been gentle and resolute. The memory of all she just had done shamed him, and he impulsively came back.
"You can't dismiss me with good-byes," he said, when he overtook her.
She smilingly extended her hand. "The sooner you go home, the better for your leg."
"That's good medicine," he admitted, as he clasped her fingers. "I'll be all right in a day or two."
Once more they parted-this time the gladness of life throbbing in their veins.
CHAPTER X
BY THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE FLOCK
T was September weather, and the hills were yel- lowing under a burning sun. Buckeye and maple mixed orange and crimson in their foliage, and clumps of poison-oak glowed ember-like. Dead leaves were everywhere, and they must frequently be cleaned from the wooden troughs that led water out of the Aguas Frias to Casa Grande. I
Nearly two months after the injury to Miller's leg he walked up the creek to look after his water supply, now at its lowest. He was armed with only a shovel, and even that had so far proved unneces- sary. His mind was serene as the weather, the days having brought few irritations, with the warfare of the squatters seemingly at a truce. He hoped he at last had worn out their resentment; he knew he had tried hard enough.
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As he stoodon thebank of the shaded stream, lost in day-dreams, a stone rattled down at his feet. Above him, on the crest of the ravine, he beheld some young cattle browsing, and in idle curiosity climbed to them. When he reached the top he gazed with pleasure at the well-fed animals, the uniformity of their reds and whites. Some distance away Mad Anthony Wayne was industriously cropping the grass, whisking flies with his slender tail, and pater- nally observant of all about him. As the master of the ranch climbed into view the roan intently re- garded him, then went on feeding, quite satisfied.
The indifferent attitude of the bull did not long continue, however. He alertly threw up his head and gazed toward the east, his ears pricked in the same direction, his breath, as he took the wind, drawn with slow, deep sniffing. He had detected something beyond the reach of Miller's duller per- ceptions, and moved expectantly forward.
The ranchero followed, out of curiosity, and pres- ently caught the low bellowing of an approaching bull. At first he concluded that it must be one of his younger animals, already lusting in the sound
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of their own voices, but as the man heard the full measure of the challenge he decided that a stranger was invading the range from the direction of Dry Creek.
The black bull of the squatters was first in his mind, the big, active, long-horned scrub, which had watchfully been kept away from his own herd for more than a year. Now that the invader had passed the barrier and was tramping forbidden soil, what was to be done?
Miller ran ahead of Mad Anthony and tried, with a flourish of the shovel, to turn him back toward Casa Grande, where the vaqueros might be sum- moned to drive the strange bull off and prevent the threatened combat. But the big roan was in no hu- mour to be turned by a man on foot; much as he. loved his master, he loved the prospect of a battle more, snorted defiantly, and shook his head in warning.
Miller now decided to drive away the black bull, fast approaching, and ran waving his shovel at the challenger. The intruder was more dangerous than Mad Anthony and quite as eager to fight. The man
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hurled a stone at him. It struck his arching ribs and bounded into the air, but the blow only mad- dened him, and he charged on Miller and drove him to an oak.
The horned warriors were fast coming together, when Belle galloped swiftly after the invader. She was mounted on a pony full of life and intelligence, alert to every motion of the rider's body. He ran with head lifted high and shining eyes and flowing mane; she sat him joyously, horse and girl a picture of nomadic freedom. A riata, looped for throwing, was in her hand, and her face was glowing from the chase.
The ranchero feared lest she might lasso the black. If she did, the roan would surely kill him, which must bring trouble on all of them. He jumped from his perch in the oak and waved his hat at her.
"Keep away !" he cried.
She drew rein in sudden confusion, and her first thought was that he might blame her for permitting the intruder to come on the ranch. "He got through the flood-gate across the creek," she said. "I didn't know he was in till I heard him bellow."
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