Blue Kingdom (20 page)

“If you wanna talk to him, I'll go see if he's awake,” said the boy.

“Talk to him? Oh, I don't want to talk to him. Yes, I do. I want to know what's his price for Excuse Me. Go and ask him, Jimmy.”

Jimmy trotted to the bunkhouse, and, entering, he found it empty except for Dunmore, who was not asleep but even now was pulling on his boots. Jimmy
announced: “She's out yonder askin' the price of Excuse Me.”

“Who is
she?
Beatrice Kirk?”

“That's her.”

Jimmy sat down on the edge of the bunk and began to talk confidentially. “Shall I say that you ain't awake?”

“But I'm awake, all right.”

“It ain't the mare she's after. She's after you. She's gone and got her one scalp already this mornin', and the takin' of it makes her hungry for more.”

“What d'you mean, Jimmy?”

“I mean that ruby ring that Furneaux was wearin' the other day. She's got that on her now.”

“She has! Are they engaged?”

“Not by the look of him as he rode off on his hoss, a while back. But they're within throwin' distance of it, I guess.”

“I'll go out and talk to her,” said Dunmore. “Jimmy, you know why I'm here. If she becomes engaged to Furneaux, I've wasted my time. I'll never get him away from the camp.”

“Aw,” answered the boy, “nothin' that she does is honest Injun.”

“What's that?”

“I used to make play houses out of chips and mud. Well, half the fun was breakin' down what I'd built up the day before. That's the way with her. She'd get engaged one day so's to have the fun of gettin' unengaged tomorrow.”

“Jimmy, you're a hard one on the girls. Wait till you get a little older, then you'll feel different about them.”

“Aw, sure,” answered little Jimmy Larren. “I'll get to the meltin' point someday and thaw out as soft as mush, but my brains . . . they still belong to myself. I can see her like she was made out of glass and sky blue.”

“Go on,” chuckled Dunmore. “What comes next?”

“How would she get herself engaged to one like Furneaux when she's got a couple of real men around the camp?”

“Furneaux is a gentleman, in a way of putting it,” said Dunmore.

“Sure,” said the boy, “but what difference does that make to her? She goes by money in the bank. I mean it's him that shoots the straightest and hits the hardest and has got the most fox inside his brain. That pleases her.”

“She's not as hard as you think, Jimmy.”

“Well, she's cracked a good many already. I dunno that you would like to see it this way, but I'd bet you a dollar to your busted knife that they ain't no man in this camp that she can see between here and the skyline except Tankerton and you.”

“Hold on, Jimmy!”

“You wait and see. Besides, she likes new men . . . all them pretty girls do. You go out there, and she'll melt in your mouth.”

Dunmore finished his dressing. “I'll go out and have a chat with her.”

“Hold on! Hold on!” pleaded Jimmy. “Wait'll I go out first and talk a mite to her. I gotta break the trail.” He started for the door, and then turned about and came a few steps back. “Chief,” he said, “suppose you
really wanted to get Furneaux out of this, dead easy? You take the girl away from the camp . . . and he'll foller wherever you lay the scent.”

“Jimmy, you're crazy. You want me to kidnap her?”

“Aw, whatcha think?” Larren asked in disgust. “I didn't say nothin' about kidnappin'.” And he left the cabin in apparent disgust.

Dunmore, remaining behind, rubbed his knuckles across his chin. The suggestion of the boy seemed ridiculous enough, but the taking of Furneaux from the gang seemed otherwise impossible. If it were true that Furneaux was engaged to Beatrice, he was bound to Tankerton with bonds of steel.

So, meditating upon the problem, Dunmore drew closer to the cabin door, and at last he could hear the faint tinkle of the voices of the girl and Jimmy on the farther side of the clearing, without looking out at them.

He heard the girl say: “Still sleeping?”

“He's kind of half awake, and lookin' at the mornin' with one eye,” answered Jimmy.

“Did you speak to him?”

“Yep.”

“Jimmy, don't be obstinate. What did he say?”

“About what?”

“About selling the mare, of course!”

“He said that you might make a meal for Excuse Me, but that oats was better for her.”

“He didn't say that!” she exclaimed.

“Didn't he?”

“Is he coming out?”

“He says that he'll think it over, but in the mornin' he don't do his thinkin' none too fast.”

Dunmore leaned against the wall of the cabin, laughing silently. When he could control himself, he straightened again and was about to step out when he heard Jimmy Larren say carelessly: “They's only one reason that the boss might sell Excuse Me.”

“What's that, Jimmy?”

“I'll tell you why. She's a mare. And he don't like nothin' female.”

“That's a strange idea, Jimmy.”

“Is it? It's the way with him. Hosses, dogs, or birds, he don't like nothin' female. You take when it comes to women, he's got no use for 'em at all.”

“That's because he's young,” Beatrice said carelessly.

“Nope,” said the boy cheerfully. “It's because he's growed really up. He says them that stop halfway is the ones that the women get.”

It was a strange mixture of handicap and advantage under which Dunmore labored when he left the bunkhouse and advanced toward Beatrice and Jimmy Larren. He had been established in an unusual position by the boy, but it was a position that he hardly knew how to maintain. He felt just like a gambler who throws in the dark.

“I've been admiring Excuse Me,” said the girl, “and I wondered if you'd like to sell her.”

“I'd sell anything,” said Dunmore.

“Well, then, what's the price for her?”

“I suppose,” said Dunmore, “that she'd be worth as she stands eight hundred or a thousand of any man's money.”

“I'd pay that,” Beatrice Kirk said eagerly.

“But, besides,” he said, “there's a lot of other things that she means to me.”

“You mean that you're fond of her?”

“I'm fond of her, and that would boost the price a good deal. Several hundreds, I suppose.”

“Well, let's hear the price.”

“There's other things to think about. The work I'm doing, a fast hoss might be the price of a man's neck. There's nothing in the mountains that can touch her, I suppose.”

“What?” she cried. “Not Gunfire?”

“You beat Gunfire with your bay.”

“That's because James rode Gunfire with one hand. Even with his weight up, Gunfire would have won if Tankerton had ridden him with both hands, as you might say.”

Dunmore shook his head. “I don't think that Gunfire could live with her, no matter who was up on him.”

“Not with a lightweight like me?”

“Not even with you.”

“I'll make you a wager on that!” she cried eagerly.

“Anything you like.”

“Anything I like? Then, what about making the mare the stake? She against Gunfire?”

“What would you do with her if you had her?” he asked, and stepped to Excuse Me, stroking her neck.

She turned her lovely head and touched his shoulder fondly. The girl smiled and nodded. “Jimmy tells me that she's a bad one, but I'd handle her.”

“That's what a lot of people have said. When she gets you down, she tries to eat you.”

“I'll take time. Time and kindness will beat any horse that I ever saw.”

At this, Dunmore looked more closely at the girl. There was an element of truth in what she said, and she shone with courage and with confidence, more than any man he ever had known. It seemed to Dunmore
that she was, in fact, a greater force than all the people he had met. She was filled with an indomitable spirit. However, he shook his head. “Can't do it,” he said.

“I'll lay you fifteen hundred cash,” she said hotly, “against Excuse Me. And I'll throw in some boot, too, if you want it.”

“She's worth more than fifteen hundred to me,” he answered. “What boot would you throw in?”

“Anything you like. If Gunfire doesn't beat her, I don't know horses.” She waved her hand as she said it, and the ruby on her finger made a red streak in the air.

“Throw in that ring,” said Dunmore. “I'll take on the bet for that.”

“What ring? This ruby one?” She clasped a protecting hand over it, almost as though she expected him to snatch it.

“All right,” said Dunmore, “I ain't so keen on making this race, after all. You keep the ring, and I'll keep the hoss.”

She glanced down at the little red jewel, and then, biting her lip, she stared at the mare.

It happened that at this moment Excuse Me tossed her head, so that a ripple of light ran over her sleeked neck and across the rippling muscles of her shoulder, making her seem a thing made all of beauty and of light. Whatever her speed, her loveliness was a thing to wonder at, and Beatrice thought of herself perched on the back of the mare—fitted to Excuse Me by divine right, as it were, and stopping the hearts of all men by a double authority.

Then she said: “Fifteen hundred . . . and this ring? Why should you want this ring, Carrick Dunmore?”

He laughed. “I don't want it so much, but it hit my eye. That's all. I don't worry much about reasons and prices. But I see that you ain't so fond of taking the chance. It's all right. I don't blame you, because she's a runner.”

At this, he could hear her teeth click.

“How far will you run?” she asked.

“Why, as far as you like . . . distance is all on your side, because Gunfire won't be carrying much weight.”

She looked narrowly at Dunmore. “There's a pair of big pine stumps down the road to Harpersville. Will you run to that place, if you know it?” she asked.

“That's a couple of miles,” he answered. “That's fair enough.”

“But, instead of the ring, I'll add another hundred to the bet. Sixteen hundred against Excuse Me.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I've already hitched my fancy to that ring,” he said.

“Are you trying to dodge the race?” she asked him tauntingly. “I'll make it two hundred more . . . three hundred, if you like.”

“Why, it's all right,” said Dunmore, watching her with hidden anxiety. “If you're fond of the ring, you hang onto it, and I'll hang onto the mare. That'll make it even.” He turned to Jimmy Larren and saw the eye of that youngster wink in secret delight. “Turn her out, Jimmy,” he said. “You won't have to hobble her, because she won't stray far from me.”

There was anger in the face of the girl now. He could feel it without looking at her, and he was not surprised at the tremor of rage in her voice as she broke in: “All right. If you want to have it that way, I'll race you for
the fifteen hundred . . . and the ring.” She hesitated. Her mind's eye seemed to conjure up the consequences if she lost, but then she shrugged her shoulders. “I'll have Gunfire on the road in five minutes,” she said, and, turning abruptly, she hurried from them and went toward the stable.

“She's pretty mad,” commented Jimmy Larren. “She'll pretty near kill herself to win this race. But if you get the ring, what'll you do with it?”

“Wear it, I suppose.”

“That'll make Furneaux wanna kill you.”

“He might chase me for the sake of that ring, then?”

“I dunno. I guess not. But if he spoke to her, she'd about die for having given it away again.”

Dunmore laughed. “I'm beginning to see a good many things, Jimmy. Get me the saddle and bridle, will you?”

Jimmy brought them both, and Dunmore himself saddled and bridled the mare, looking to the cinches with care.

When he was on the back of Excuse Me, he saw the stallion, Gunfire, come on his hind legs out of the stable, filled with nervous fire, and the girl atilt in the saddle, wonderfully brave and cool. On the out trail he met her, while Larren on his mustang scampered past them to get to the finish in time for that end of the spectacle.

Then Dunmore took note of the difference between the two animals. The stallion was more imposing, more grand. The mare was more beautiful. But it seemed to Dunmore that she had greater strength as well. She had not the proudly arched neck, to be sure,
but her square quarters, and her long, powerful shoulders, and the shortness of her back told both of carrying power and speed. Gunfire stormed into the mind and royally demanded admiration, whereas the mare slipped quietly into one's appreciation. But, yet, as he surveyed the stallion and contrasted him with his own mental picture of the mare, he was more and more confident.

They came to the point where the various trails from the camp and its vicinity met and joined to make one established road that twisted here and there among the trees and led on toward distant Harpersville.

The girl ranged beside him at once. She was as light in the saddle as a jockey, and the strong pull of the black horse seemed to lift her from her seat, straining at her arms. But that was mere semblance. He could tell in another glance that she was in perfect balance, controlling the stallion with a steady pull.

At the same time she flashed at Dunmore a glance that ran from head to feet, appraising him, criticizing him, taking note of formidable qualities, at length leaving the mare and settling upon Dunmore alone.

He thought that he saw her nod a little, as much as to say to herself that, no matter how fine the mare might be, the bulk of the rider would make the difference in a four-mile race. The same thought was in Dunmore's own mind.