Guardians of the Sage (14 page)

Left to her own devices, Letty found time hanging heavily on her hands. For want of something better to do she went to the kitchen and baked a cake for supper. Charlie Chin, the Chinese cook, looked on and said nothing. Later, from a comfortable chair on the front porch, she tried to interest herself in the activities of the ranch. A big freighting team pulled in toward evening with lumber for the new bunk-house. It created a diversion which drew most of the men in sight down to the spot where the building was to be erected. It apparently was of no interest to a man squatting on his toes in the shade beyond the porch. Letty could not recall ever having seen him before, and the scar on his face made it one to be remembered. Unconsciously she began to watch him, and at the end of half an hour she was convinced that the man was furtively watching her. Suddenly she understood.

“My bodyguard,” she surmised, a frown puckering her forehead. Evidently her father had meant what he said. “He certainly didn't go in for looks when he picked his man,” she thought. “No danger of me trying my wiles on this one.”

Just to prove herself correct, she pulled on her hat and started across the ranch yard. Before she reached the corrals the man got to his feet and began moving in her direction.

“There you are!” she said to herself. “My man Friday, sure as shootin'!”

She caught a glimpse of Reb a few minutes later and beckoned him to her.

“Reb, do I have to thank you or Father for the faithful watchdog leaning on the corral gate?”

Reb pretended an utter innocence and half turned to see to whom she alluded. He saw Johnny Lefleur looking in his direction.

“Him?” he queried, with a stiff little jerk of his head.

“Yes, Handsome Dan,” Letty murmured with chilling sarcasm. “What's his name?”

“Johnny Lefleur—” Reb seemed anxious to be on his way, fearing he was in for another heckling. “Your father said he wanted a reliable man.”

“You did yourself proud, Reb,” Letty teased. “I'll return him to you safe and sound——”

“But Miss Letty, you be careful now,” Reb warned with great earnestness. “You don't know how serious things is——”

“If I don't it isn't because I haven't been told,” she broke in saucily. “I bet you'd jump right now if I said boo!”

“If you'd been here last night you wouldn't have found it any joke,” Reb sulked.

“Speaking of last night reminds me,” said Letty. “Father told me about Jim Montana coming over at daylight to get that poor boy. He said you could give me the details——”

Reb ground his teeth together. “That's just his way of ribbing me,” he groaned.

“Well, you seem as unhappy about it as he.” Letty was not being facetious now. “It was a decent thing to do, and even though he is on the other side of this fight you might have the good grace to admit it. Just what happened, Reb?”

Mr. Russell had difficulty containing himself.

“You see, I'm pretty busy right now, ma'am,” he got out nervously. “I really shouldn't be standing here talking away like this. It—it wasn't nothing much. He just—came over and got him.”

It was such a lame answer as to leave Letty convinced that she had heard anything but the truth. But Reb was not staying for further questioning. He had hailed one of his men, and without waiting to excuse himself, had hurried away.

Letty returned to the porch to ponder the question that was troubling her. Instinctively, she sensed that Jim had put their noses out of joint, and she was determined to get to the bottom of it. But her surmises got her no where. She ended by deciding to put a question or two to her bodyguard in the hope that he might be able to throw some light on the matter.

In answer to her summons Johnny sat down gingerly on the edge of the porch and gave her a shy grin. In short order she had his name and the fact that, prior to signing on with the Bar S at Furnace Creek, he had worked for her father at Quinn River. Letty felt encouraged.

“Then you are acquainted with Jim Montana,” she ventured almost absent-mindedly.

Johnny shied away as though he had stepped on a rattler.

“You—couldn't hardly call us strangers—after last night,” he muttered sheepishly.

“Oh, last night, eh?” Letty echoed, her tone far less casual than she wanted it to be. “You must have been on the North Fork.”

“Yeah, I was one of the reception committee,” he admitted without enthusiasm. Letty took her cue from it.

“Evidently you were as glad to see him as the others.”

Johnny's protruding Adam's apple slid up and down his throat as he gulped back his surprise.

“I—I didn't know anybody was makin' a holiday over it,” he stammered. He was about to express a further opinion when a belated sense of caution made him pause, and he fastened his faded blue eyes on Letty. “Maybe your just givin' me a ride, ma'am,” he said.

Letty quickly disabused his mind on that point. Within ten minutes she had a complete and graphic story of what happened. Her pride in Jim soared. It was easy to understand Reb Russell's perturbance and her father's irascibility now.

“I could have picked him off,” Johnny concluded, “but as I told Reb, if a gent's got guts enough to force a thing like that down my throat I ain't agoin' to wash him out just to ease my injured feelin's.”

Letty rewarded him with a smile.

“You'll do to take along, Johnny,” she said, her eyes misting. She could appreciate the cool nerve and the danger Jim had run. Somehow it was no more than she had expected of him, and it warmed something in her. But having succeeded, he would go on to other undertakings perhaps even more hazardous.

She told herself she could not go back to Willow Vista—that she would not. And Johnny . . . she had him to thank for more than she dared put into words. There was nothing about him to suggest that he would burn chivalrous under pressure. But he had, and Letty could only accuse herself for having scoffed at him.

“It's just the old story again,” she thought, “of not being able to tell what is in a package until you've unwrapped it.”

She felt she had to be alone for a while. As she got up to enter the house she paused to say to Johnny:

“It takes a big man to be generous in a situation like that. I won't forget it.”

Her praise bewildered Johnny. But he did not try to understand it.

“Reckon Reb doesn't aim to forget it either,” he sighed lugubriously.

“Why, what has he done?” she asked.

Johnny found himself in a very embarrassing spot. He dug a boot heel into the ground.

“Not meanin' any offense to you, ma'am,” he got out awkwardly, “but you know what he's got me doin'.”

“Watching me, you mean,” Letty nodded. “You—find it so unpleasant?”

“No, I don't mind it that way.” Johnny found it easier to gaze at the distant blue of the Malheurs than meet her eyes. “As work goes it's easy enough. But——”

“But what, Johnny?” Despite herself, Letty was enjoying his discomfiture.

“Well, the fact is,” he blurted out desperately, “I ain't never been called on to play nurse-maid before——”

“And the boys are rubbing it in,” she finished for him, her eyes snapping with indignation. She could imagine what they were saying and it infuriated her, but she blamed her father, not the men. He had made her ridiculous.

“I suspect the harm has been done, Johnny,” she told him, “but if it will make you feel any better I can guarantee you that your nurse-maiding is just about over. It will be as soon as Father comes to the house. I'm capable of looking out for myself.”

“Gee, I wish you wouldn't say nothin',” Johnny pleaded. “I can stand it until tomorrow. You'll be going——”

“But I'm not going!” she corrected him. “I'm staying right here! The Bar S didn't use to be afraid of its shadow. But times have changed. We're fighting a man now who doesn't give a tinker's damn about the pomp and glory of Stall and Matlack, and everybody seems to be getting panicky . . . . well, you give my regards to Mr. Russell,” she finished with killing sarcasm, “and tell him to be sure to have the men look under the bunks before they go to sleep. Maybe they'll be able to get a good night's rest.”

Head up, she whirled angrily and marched into the house, slamming the door after her. It was a moment or two before Johnny Lefleur could find his tongue. He felt a little groggy.

“Jumpin' Jee-ru-sa-lem!” he burst out. “I'll tell him, ma'am—I'll sure tell him that!”

I
N THE course of an hour, Letty found herself with a fine case of the jitters on hand, but she was still as far as ever from discovering anything that held promise of making her father change his mind about her staying. She told herself it was a situation calling for desperate measures, and she was resolved to stop at nothing to win her point. Usually she could wheedle him into anything she wanted. She knew she couldn't hope for success that way this time.

Without doubt she would be in some danger in remaining there; but not in any such measure as he insisted. It weighed lightly enough on her.

“It isn't as though I wanted to stay on for the thrill of it,” she protested to herself. “He'll be more careful if I'm here—and my presence may restrain things a little.”

There was a third and more potent reason why she was so determined to remain at Squaw Valley. If she refused to consider it now it was only because it frightened her a little to admit how much Jim Montana had come to mean to her.

Obviously it would do no good to feign sickness; her father would have her packed out to a hospital at once. She considered other subterfuges, but they promised just as little.

“But I
will
stay,” she insisted stubbornly, “and without being made ridiculous.”

It was almost supper time when, from her window, she saw her father returning to the house. He had been up since daylight, but his step was brisk as he crossed the yard. There was something about the set of his shoulders and head that conveyed to her a sense of his power and indomitable will.

Letty smiled fondly to herself, for she was not only proud of him but in the last few minutes she had made up her mind as to what she was to do.

It was only a few minutes before Charlie Chin rang the get-ready-for-supper bell. On all Bar S ranches it carried a peremptory summons. Five minutes later a second bell rang: supper was on the table. The food was plain, but usually well cooked, and there was always enough for all. But there was no second table or provision made for late-comers. If you would eat, be there when the bell rang. If you had been out in the hills, rounding up strays, and chanced to return late, or were moving from one ranch to another and got in after things had been cleared away, you went to bed hungry. There was a time and a place for eating, as there was for everything else in the regimented world of Henry Stall, and his cooks carried out his orders with zeal.

Old Slick-ear and his foremen always ate with the men. Betty's presence never altered that; a place was made for her and she took pot luck with the men.

Having anticipated the bell, she was almost ready to go downstairs when the first one rang. She felt refreshed, having managed a bath and changed from riding breeches to a cool frock.

Her eyes were dancing as she regarded herself in her mirror. She was thinking of the men. They could have their laugh at her expense behind her back. Face to face they were helpless. It needed only a smile or the simplest attention to confound them utterly. So if she lingered over her toilette tonight it was with malice aforethought.

Her father called to her as she was examining her mouth critically.

“I'll be down right away,” she called back. But she did not go at once because she had caught sight of two men riding into the yard. They were gray with dust, and she knew they had come a long way. One of them she recognized as Tiny Melody, a Bar S man of long standing. He had a leather pouch hung over his saddle bow. From it she gathered that he was bringing in the mail from Vale.

It was the other man, rather than Tiny, who interested her. She found him strangely familiar, and before he had dismounted recognized in him Seth MacMasters from San Francisco, one of her father's attorneys. That he had journeyed so far from home and made the long ride in from Vale hinted that his business there must be of the most urgent nature.

Not only was her curiosity instantly aroused but she was conscious of a feeling of alarm. Surmising that she would get no information from her father concerning the secret mission which had brought MacMasters there, she hurried downstairs, hoping to overhear enough to give her some hint of what had brought him.

She heard her father's exclamation of surprise as MacMasters entered. Certainly he had not expected him.

“I had expected a letter, or even a wire,” he said, “but to see you in person, Mr. MacMasters——”

“It's been an experience, coming here,” the lawyer laughed heartily. “I never thought I'd be able to get out of that saddle unless you got me a derrick; but when your man, Melody, heard the bell and began to put on the pressure, I found I was hungrier than I was sore. I hope I'm here in time.”

“Just in time. . . . Nothing wrong?”

“Quite the contrary,” MacMasters beamed. “I'll need you in Vale tomorrow afternoon. Judge Robbins will wait for us. I have some things to discuss that I didn't want to put on paper.”

Old Slick-ear thought he understood him now.

“Then you've heard from——”

“Yes, and very promising news,” his lawyer broke in. He had caught a glimpse of Letty Stall on the stairs. He turned to her with outstretched hand. “This is a surprise all around, I think,” he smiled. “I hardly expected to find you here, Letty.”