CHAPTER XI
SELF-DEFENSE
Nothing more was said about the trip to town until late Wednesday evening. As Knowles slammed shut his book and the young men rose to withdraw to the bunkhouse, he asked Gowan casually: “Got those harness hawsses in the corral?”
“Brought ’em in this afternoon. Greased the buckboard and overhauled the harness. Everything’s in shape,” answered the puncher.
Knowles merely nodded. Yet in the morning, immediately after the usual early breakfast, Gowan went up to the corral and returned driving a lively pair of broncos to the old buckboard. Ashton happened to come around the house as Knowles stepped from the front door. The cowman was followed by his daughter, attired in a new riding habit and a fashionable hat with a veil.
“You’re just in time, Lafe,” said Knowles. “Saddle a couple of hawsses and follow Chuckie to town. I misdoubt that seat is cramped for three, and a baby to boot.”
“But I–it looks quite wide to me,” said Ashton, flushing and drawing back.
“You know the size of Blake and his lady–I don’t,” replied the cowman. “Just the same, I want you to go along with Chuckie. There’s not a puncher in this section would harm her, drunk or sober; but the fellows that come in and go out on the railroad are sometimes another sort.”
“Of course I–if necessary,” stammered Ashton. “Yet may I ask you to excuse me? In the event of trouble, Mr. Gowan, you know–”
“Great snakes!” called Gowan from the buckboard. “Needn’t ask me to go, twice!”
“Can’t spare you today,” said Knowles, his keen eyes fixed on Ashton in unconcealed amazement.
It was inconceivable. For the first time in his career as an employé, the tenderfoot was attempting to evade a duty,–a duty that comprised a fifty-mile ride in company with Miss Isobel Knowles!
The girl looked at Ashton with a perfect composure that betrayed no trace of her feelings.
“I’m sure there’s no reason whatever why Lafe should go, if he does not wish to,” she remarked. “Any of my hawsses will lead to the buckboard.”
“He’s going to town with you,” said Knowles, his jaw setting hard with stubborn determination.
“Why, of course, Mr. Knowles, if you really think it necessary,” reluctantly acquiesced Ashton. He put his hand into his pocket, shrugged, and asked in a hesitating manner: “May I request–I have only a small amount left from that five dollars. If you consider there are any wages owing me–Going to town, you know.”
“Lord!” said the cowman. “So that’s what you stuck on. ’Fraid of running out of change with a lady along. Here’s the balance of your first month’s wages, and more, if you want it.”
He drew out a fat wallet and began counting out banknotes.
“Oh, no, not so many,” said Ashton. “I wish only what you consider as owing to me now.”
“You’ll take an even hundred,” ordered Knowles, forcing the money on him. “A man doesn’t feel just right in town unless he’s well heeled. Only don’t show more than a ten at a time in the saloon.”
“You have chosen me to act as your daughter’s escort,” replied Ashton.
Quick to catch the inference of his remark, Isobel flashed him a look of approval, but called banteringly as she darted out to the buckboard: “Better move, if you expect to get near enough to escort me, this side of Stockchute.”
Gowan sprang down to hand her into the buckboard. She took the reins from him and spoke to the fidgetting broncos. They plunged forward and started off on a lope. Ashton perceived that she did not intend to wait for him. He caught Gowan’s look of mingled exultance and envy, and dashed for the corral. Rocket was outside, but at his call trotted to meet him, whinnying for his morning’s lump of sugar. Ashton flung on saddle and bridle, and slipped inside the corral to rope his own pony. Haste made him miss the two first throws. At last he noosed the pony, and slapped on the girl’s saddle and bridle.
As he raced off, pounding the pony with his rope to keep him alongside Rocket, Knowles waved to him from the house. He had saddled up in less than twice the time that Gowan could have done it,–which was a record for a tenderfoot. He waved back, but his look was heavy despite the excitement of the pursuit.
He expected to overtake Isobel in a few minutes. This he could have done had he been able to give Rocket free rein. But he had to hold back for the slower-gaited pony. Also, the girl had more of a start than he had at first realized, and she did her best to hold the handicap. Hitched to the light buckboard, her young broncos could have run a good part of the way to Stockchute. She was far out on the flat before she at last tired of the wild bumping over ruts and sagebrush roots, and pulled her horses down to a walk.
“I could have kept ahead clear across to the hills,” she flung back at him as he galloped up.
“You shouldn’t have been so reckless!” he reproached. “Every moment I’ve been dreading to see you bounced out.”
“That’s the fun of it,” she declared, her cheeks aglow and eyes sparkling with delight.
“But the road is so rough!” he protested. “Wouldn’t it be easier for you to ride my pony? He’s like a rocking-chair.”
“No,” she refused. But she smiled, by no means ill pleased at his solicitude for her comfort. She halted the broncos, and said cordially: “Tie the saddle hawsses to the back rail, and pile in. We may as well be sociable.”
He hastened to accept the invitation. She moved over to the left side of the seat and relinquished the lines to him. With most young ladies this would have been a matter-of-course proceeding; from so accomplished a horsewoman it was a tactful compliment. He appreciated it at its full value, and his mood lightened. They rattled gayly along, on across the flats, up and down among the piñon clad hills, and through the sage and greasewood of the valleys.
He had thought the country a desolate wilderness; but now it seemed a Garden of Eden. Never had the girl’s loveliness been more intoxicating, never had her manner to him been more charming and gracious. He could not resist the infection of her high spirits. For the greater part of the trip he gave himself over to the delight of her merry eyes and dimpling, rosy cheeks, her adorable blushes and gay repartee.
All earthly journeys and joys have an ending. The buckboard creaked up over the round of the last and highest hill, and they came in sight of the little shack town down across the broad valley. Though five miles away, every house, every telegraph pole, even the thin lines of the railroad rails appeared through the dry clear air as distinct as a miniature painting. Miles beyond, on the far side of the valley, uprose the huge bulk of Split Peak, with its white-mantled shoulders and craggy twin peaks.
But neither Ashton nor Isobel exclaimed on this magnificent view of valley and peak. Each fell silent and gazed soberly down at the dozen scattered shacks that marked the end of their outward trip. Rapidly the gravity of Ashton’s face deepened to gloom and from gloom to dejection. The horses would have broken into a lope on the down grade. He held them to a walk.
Chancing to gaze about and see his face, the girl started from her bright-eyed daydream. “Why, Lafe! what is it?” she inquired. “You look as you did the other day, when you brought the mail.”
“It’s–everything!” he muttered.
“As what?” she queried.
He shrugged hopelessly, hesitated, and drew out the roll of bills forced on him by Knowles. “Tell me, please, just how much of this is mine, at your father’s usual rate of wages, and deducting the real value of that calf.”
“Why, I can’t just say, offhand,” she replied. “But why should you–”
“I shall tell you as soon as–but first–” He drew out his watch. “This cost me two hundred and fifty dollars. It is the only thing I have worth trading. Would you take it in exchange for Rocket and the balance of this hundred dollars over and above what is due me?”
“Why–no, of course, I wouldn’t think of such a thing. It would be absurd, cheating yourself that way. Anyhow, Rocket is your horse to ride, as long as you wish to.”
“But I would like him for my own. How about trading him for my pony and the wages due me?”
“Well, that wouldn’t be an unfair bargain. Your hawss is the best cow pony of the two.”
“It is very kind of you to agree, Miss Chuckie! Here is all the money; and here is the watch. I wish you to accept it from me as a–memento.”
“Mr. Ashton!” she exclaimed, indignantly widening the space between them as much as the seat would permit.
“Please!” he begged. “Don’t you understand? I am going away.”
“Going away?” she echoed.
“Yes.”
“But–why?”
“Because he is coming.”
“Mr. Blake?”
“Yes. I cannot stay after he–”
“But why not? Has he injured you? Are you afraid of him?”
“No. I’m afraid that you–” Ashton’s voice sank to a whisper–“that you will believe what he–what they will say against me.”
“Oh!” she commented, her expression shifting swiftly from sympathetic concern to doubt.
He caught the change in her look and tone, and flushed darkly.
“There are sometimes two sides to a story,” he muttered.
“Tell me your side now,” she suggested, with her usual directness.
His eyes fell before her clear honest gaze. His flush deepened. He hung his head, biting his twisted lip. After several moments he began to speak in a hesitating broken murmur:
“I’ve always been–wild. But I graduated from Tech.–not at the foot of my class. My father–always busy piling up millions–never a word or thought for me, except when I overspent my allowance. I was in a–fast set. My father–threatened me. I had to make good. I took a position in old Leslie’s office–Genevieve’s father. I–”
He paused, licked his lips, hesitated, and abruptly went on again, this time speaking with almost glib facility: “There was an engineers’ contest for a projected bridge over Michamac Strait. I started to draw plans, that I might enter the contest, but I did not finish in time. The plans of the other engineers were all rejected. I continued to work on mine. After the contest I happened to pick up a piece of torn plan out of the office wastebasket, and it gave me a suggestion how to improve the central span of my bridge.”
“Yes?” asked the girl, her interest deepening.
He again licked his lips, hesitated, and continued: “There was no name on that torn plan–nothing to indicate to whom it had belonged. So I used it–that is, the suggestion I got from it, and was awarded the bridge on my plans. This made me the Resident Engineer of the bridge, and I had it almost completed when this man Blake came back from Africa after Genevieve, and claimed that I had–had stolen his plans of the bridge. It seems they were lost in Mr. Leslie’s office. He claimed he had handed them in to me for the contest. But so had all the other contestants, and their plans were not lost. It may have been that one of the doorkeepers tore his plans up, out of revenge. Blake was a very rough brute of a fellow at that time. He quarreled with the doorkeeper because the man would not admit him to see Mr. Leslie–threatened to smash him. Afterwards he accused Mr. Leslie of stealing his plans.”
“Oh, no, no! he couldn’t have done that! He can’t be that kind of a man!” protested Isobel.
“It’s true! Even he will not deny it. Old Leslie thought him crazy–then. It was different when he came back and accused me! He had been shipwrecked with Genevieve. They were alone together all those weeks, and so one can–” Ashton checked himself. “No, you must not think–He saved her. When they came back he claimed the bridge as his own–those lost plans.”
“His plans? So that was it! And you–?”
“Of course they believed him. What was my word against his with Genevieve and Leslie. Leslie’s consulting engineer was an old pal of Blake’s. So of course I–I’ll say though that Blake agreed to put it that I had only borrowed his idea of the central span.”
“That was generous of him, if he really believed–”
“Did he?–did Genevieve? Do they believe it now? You see why I must go away.”
“I don’t any such thing,” rejoined the girl.
“You don’t?” he exclaimed. “When they are coming here, believing I did it! They must believe it, all of them! And my father–after all this time–They agreed not to tell him. Yet he has found out. That letter, up at the waterhole–it was from his lawyers. He had cut me off–branded me as an outcast.”
“Without waiting to hear your side–without asking you to explain? How unjust! how unfair!” cried Isobel.
Ashton winced. “I–I told you I–my record was against me. But I was his son–he had no right to brand me as a–a thief! My valet read the letter. He must have told the guide–the scoundrels!”
Tears of chagrin gathered in the young man’s dark eyes. He bit his lip until the blood ran.
“O-o-oh!” sighed the girl. “It’s all been frightfully unjust! You haven’t had fair play! I shall tell Mr. Blake.”
“No, not him!–not him!” Ashton’s voice was almost shrill. “All I wish is to slip away, before they see me.”
“You don’t mean, run away?” she said, quietly placing her little gauntlet-gloved hand on his arm. “You’re not going to run away, Lafe.”
“What else?” he asked, his eyes dark with bitter despair. “Would you have me return, to be booted off the range when they tell your father?”
“Just wait and see,” she replied, gazing at him with a reassuring smile. “You’ve proved yourself a right smart puncher–for a tenderfoot. You’re in the West, the good old-style West, where it’s a man’s present record that counts; not what he has been or what he has done. No, you’re not going to run. You’re going to face it out–and going to stay to learn your new profession of puncher and–man!”
“But they will not wish to associate with me.”
“Yes, they will,” she predicted. “I shall see to that.”
He took heart a little from her cheery, positive assurance. “Well, if you insist, I shall not go until they show–”
“They’ll not recognize you at first. That will give me a chance to speak before they can say anything disagreeable. I’m sure Mr. Blake will understand.”
“But–Genevieve?”
“If she married him when he was as rough as you say, and if he agrees to let bygones be bygones, you need have no fear of Mrs. Blake. Only be sure to go into raptures over the baby. Tell her it’s the perfect image of its father.”
“What if it isn’t?” objected Ashton gloomily.
She dimpled. “One must allow for the difference in age; and there’s always some resemblance–each must have a mouth and eyes and ears and a nose.”
He caught himself on the verge of laughter. Her eyes were fixed upon him, pure and honest and dancing with mirth. A sudden flood of crimson swept up his face from his bristly, tanned chin to his white forehead. He averted his gaze from hers.
“You’re good!” he choked out. “I don’t deserve–But I can’t go–when you tell me to stay!”
“Of course you can’t,” she lightly rejoined. “Look! There’s the train coming. Push on the lines!”
CHAPTER XII
THE MEETING
A word started the horses into a lope. The buckboard was whirled along over the last two miles to Stockchute in a wild race against the train. The steam horse won. It had sidetracked the private car attached to the rear of the last pullman and was puffing away westward, when Ashton guided his running team in among the crude shacks of the town. He swung around at a more moderate pace towards the big chute for cattle-loading, and fetched up a few yards out from the rear step of the private car.
An assiduous porter had already swung down with a box step. A big, square-faced, square-framed man of twenty-eight or thirty stepped out into the car vestibule. He sprang to the ground as Miss Knowles stepped from the buckboard. She had lowered her veil, but it failed to mask the extreme brilliancy of her eyes and her quick changes of color. Her face, flushed from the excitement of the race into town, went white when she first saw the man in the vestibule; flushed again when he sprang down; again paled; and, last of all, glowed radiantly as she advanced to meet him.
He hastened to her, baring his big head of its Panama, and staring at her fashionable hat and dress in frank surprise.
“Mr. Blake!” she murmured.
At the sound of her voice he started and fixed his light blue eyes on her veiled face with a keen glance. She turned pale and as quickly blushed, as if embarrassed by his scrutiny.
“Excuse me!” he apologized. “You are Miss Knowles?”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“Knowles?” he repeated, half to himself. “Strange! Haven’t I met you before?”
“In Denver?” she suggested. “I spend my winters in Denver. But there was one in Europe.”
“No, it wouldn’t be either. You must excuse me, Miss Knowles. There was something about your voice and face–rather threw me off my balance. If you’ll kindly overlook the bungling start-off! I’m greatly pleased to meet you. My wife will be, too. May I ask you to step aboard the car?–No, here she is now.”
A graceful, rather small lady, dressed with elegant simplicity, had come out into the car vestibule.
“Jenny, here’s Miss Knowles now,” said Blake. “She came to meet us herself.”
“That was very good of you, Miss Knowles,” said the lady, as the two advanced towards her. “We are very glad to meet you. Will you not come up out of the sun?”
The white-uniformed porter promptly stood at attention. Blake as promptly offered his hand. The girl accepted his assistance and mounted the car steps with an absence of awkwardness instantly noted by Mrs. Blake. That lady held out a somewhat thin white hand as Isobel drew off her gauntlet gloves. But she did not stop with the light firm handclasp. Lifting the girl’s veil, she kissed her full on her coral lips.
“We shall be friends,” she stated, a smile in her hazel eyes.
“I hope so,” murmured the girl, blushing with delight. “The only question is whether you will like me.”
Mrs. Blake patted the plump, sunbrowned hand that she had not yet relinquished. She was little if any older than the girl, but her air was that of matronly wisdom. “My dear, can you doubt it? I was prepared to like even the kind of young woman my husband told me to expect.”
“Bronco Bess, Queen of the Cattle Camp,” suggested the girl, dimpling. “Wait till you see me rope and hogtie a steer.”
Mrs. Blake smiled, and looked across at Ashton, who sat motionless under the shadow of his big sombrero, his face half averted from the car.
“I’ve a real surprise for you,” said the girl. “Mr. Blake, if I may tell it to you also.”
Blake swung up the steps, hat in hand. “It can’t be half as pleasant as the surprise you’ve already given us,” he said.
“I fear not,” she replied, with a quick change to gravity. She looked earnestly into their faces. “Still, I hope–yes, I really believe it will please you when you consider it. But first, I want to tell you that out here it’s our notion that a man should be rated according to his present life, and not blamed for his past mistakes.”
“Certainly not!” agreed Mrs. Blake, with a swift glance at her husband. “If a man has mounted to a higher level, he should be upheld, not dragged down again.”
“That’s good old-style Western fair play,” added Blake.
“I’m so glad you take it that way!” said Isobel. “A young man utterly ruined in fortune–partly at least through his own fault–came to us and asked to be hired. He has been a hard worker and a gentleman. His name is Lafayette Ashton.”
“Ashton?” said Blake, his face as impassive as a granite mask.
“Yes. He has told me all about the bridge. He wished to go away, because he thought you and Mrs. Blake would not like to meet him. I told him you would be willing to let bygones be bygones, and help him start off with a new tally card.”
“Lafayette Ashton working–as a cowboy!” murmured Mrs. Blake.
“He is still a good deal of a tenderfoot. But he is learning fast; and work!–the way he pesters Daddy to find him something to do!”
“He certainly must be a changed man,” dryly commented Blake.
“Cherchez la femme,” said his wife.
“Mrs. Blake!” protested the girl, blushing.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“‘Find the woman,’” explained Mrs. Blake.
“That’s easy,” he said, fixing his twinkling eyes on the rosy-faced girl.
“But I’m sure it has not been because of me–at least not altogether,” she qualified with her uncompromising honesty.
“I wouldn’t blame him even if it was altogether,” said Blake.
“Then you will be willing to overlook your past trouble with him?”
“Since you say he has straightened out–yes.”
“That’s good of you! That’s what I expected of you!” exclaimed the girl. “That is he, in the buckboard.”
Without a word, Blake started down the car steps.
“Bring him here at once, Tom,” said Mrs. Blake.
Her husband went up beside the motionless figure in the buckboard and held out his hand. “Glad to meet you, Ashton,” he said with matter-of-fact heartiness. “Jenny wants you to come to her. We’re not ready to start, as we were not certain we would be met.”
“Miss–Mrs. Blake wishes me to come!” mumbled Ashton.
“Yes,” said Blake, gripping the other’s hesitatingly extended hand.
Ashton flushed darkly. “But I–I can’t leave the horses,” he replied.
Blake signed to the porter, who hastened forward. “Hold the lines for this gentleman, Sam.”
Ashton reluctantly gave the lines into the mulatto’s sallow hands and stepped from the buckboard. His head hung forward as he followed Blake. But at the foot of the steps he removed his sombrero and forced himself to look up. Isobel was smiling down at him encouragingly. He looked from her to Mrs. Blake, his handsome face crimson with shame.
“How do you do, Lafayette?” Mrs. Blake greeted him with quiet cordiality. “This is a pleasant surprise.”
“Yes–yes, indeed! I–yes, very!” he stammered, so embarrassed that he would have stuck at the foot of the steps had not Blake started him up with a vigorous boost.
Mrs. Blake gave him her hand. “You look so strong and hearty!” she remarked. “It speaks well for the fare Miss Knowles provides.”
“Oh, that credit is due our Jap chef,” laughed the girl. “I can cut out a cow from the herd better than I can bone a chop. But the butter and eggs and cream that are awaiting you–Which reminds me that we’ve yet to see It.”
“It?” asked Blake.
“Yes, him–the baby!”
“Oh, you dear girl!” cooed Mrs. Blake. “Come in and see him.”
Isobel followed her into the car. Blake nodded to Ashton. But the younger man shrank away from the door.
“If you’ll kindly excuse me,” he muttered. “It would remind me too much of–the time when–No, I’d rather not.”
“Of course,” assented Blake with ready understanding. “How do you like this country? I went through here once on a railway survey. It’s rare good luck–this chance to visit Miss Knowles. Jenny is a little run down, as you see.”
“I shall trust that her visit to this locality will soon quite restore her,” remarked Ashton.
“It will. The doctors said Maine; I said Colorado. It has done you no end of good. You are looking particularly fine and fit.”
“It has helped me–in more ways than one,” murmured Ashton.
“Glad to hear you say it!” responded Blake in hearty approval.
Ashton turned from him as Isobel appeared in the doorway, cuddling a lusty, rosy-cheeked baby. The mother hovered close behind her.
“Look at him!” jeered Blake with heavily feigned derision. “Did you ever see such a big, fat, lubberly–”
“Yes, look at him, Lafe,” said the girl, stepping out into the vestibule. “He is only a yearling, but isn’t he just the perfect image of his father?”
Ashton burst into a ringing laugh, but abruptly checked himself at sight of the sober face of the young mother. “I–I beg pardon!” he stammered. “I–she–Miss Knowles–that is what she told me to tell you about him.”
“And you didn’t play up worth a little bit, Lafe!” complained the girl.
It was Blake’s turn to laugh. “You–!” he accused. “Schemed to frame up a case on us did you!”
His wife smiled faintly, not altogether certain that an aspersion had not been cast upon her chuckling son.
“But it’s partly true, really,” remarked Ashton, peering at the baby’s big pale-blue eyes.
Blake burst into a hilarious roar. But Mrs. Blake now beamed upon Ashton. “Then you, too, see the resemblance, Lafayette! Isn’t it wonderful, and he so young? His name is Thomas Herbert Vincent Leslie Blake.–Now, my dear, if you please, I shall take him in. We must be preparing to start, if it is so long a drive.”
“Do let me hold him until you and Mr. Blake are ready,” begged the girl.
“I am not quite sure that–You will be careful not to drop him? He is tremendously strong, and he squirms,” dubiously assented the fond mother. “Come, Tom. We must not keep Miss Knowles waiting.”
Blake disappeared with her into the luxuriously furnished car.
“Isn’t he a dear?” cooed the girl, clasping the baby to her bosom and kissing his chubby clenched hands. He stared up into her glowing face with his round light-blue eyes. “Thomas Blake!–Tom Blake!” she whispered.
Ashton did not heed the words. He was gazing too intently at the girl and the child. His eyes glistened with a wonderment and longing so exquisitely intense that it was like a pain. The girl sank down in one of the cane chairs and laid the baby on his back. He kicked and gurgled, seized one of his upraised feet and thrust a pink big toe in between his white milk teeth.
“That’s more than you can do, Lafe!” challenged the girl.
She glanced up, dimpling with merriment,–met the adoration in his eyes, and looked down, blushing. He attempted to speak, but the words choked into an incoherent sound like a sob. He jumped from the car and hurried to take the lines from the porter.