Bransford of Rainbow Range
“It looks that way,” confessed Leo. “Did you have a chill, Jeff?”
Jeff’s eyes crinkled. “Not so nigh as I am now. But shucks! I’ve been in worse emergencies, and I always emerged. Thanks be, I can always do my best when I have to. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we don’t keep in practice! If I’d just come out straightforward and declared myself to Pappy, he’d ’a’ tightened up his drawstrings and forgot all about my chill. But, no, well as I know from long experience that good old human nature’s only too willin’ to do the right thing and the fair thing – if somebody’ll only tip it off to ’em – I must play a lone hand and not even call for my partner’s best. Well, I’m goin’ to ramify around and scrutinize this here Stratton’s numbers, equipments and disposition. Meet me in the office at the fatal hour!”
The Marshal wore a mocking smile. Stratton, large, florid, well-fed and eminently respectable, turned in his revolving chair with a severe and majestic motion; adjusted his glasses in a prolonged and offensive examination, and frowned portentously.
“Fine large day, isn’t it?” observed Jeff affably. “Beautiful little city you have here.” He sank into a chair. Smile and attitude were of pleased and sprightly anticipation.
A faint flush showed beneath Stratton’s neatly-trimmed mutton-chops. Such jaunty bearing was exasperating to offended virtue. “Ah – who is this other person, Mr. Hobart?”
“Pardon my rudeness!” Jeff sprang up and bowed brisk apology. “Mr. Stratton, allow me to present Mr. Ballinger, a worthy representative of the Yellow Press. Mr. Stratton – Mr. Ballinger!”
“I have a communication to make to you,” said the displeased Mr. Stratton, in icy tones, “which, in your own interest, should be extremely private.” The Marshal whispered to him; Stratton gave Leo a fiercely intimidating glare.
“Communicate away,” said Jeff airily. “Excommunicate, if you want to. Mr. Ballinger, as a citizen, is part owner of this office. If you want to bar him you’ll have to change the venue to your private residence. And then I won’t come.”
“Very well, sir!” Mr. Stratton rose, inflated his chest and threw back his head. His voice took on a steady roll. “Mr. Bransford, you stand under grave displeasure of the law! You are grievously suspected of being cognizant of, if not actually accessory to, the robbery of the United States Mail by John Taylor, Junior, at Escondido, on the eighteenth day of last October. You may not be aware of it, but you have an excellent chance of serving a term in the penitentiary!”
Jeff pressed his hands between his knees and leaned forward. “I’m sure I’d never be satisfied there,” he said, with conviction. His white teeth flashed in an ingratiatory smile. “But why suspect young John? – why not old John?” He paused, looking at the Register attentively. “H’m! – you’re from Indiana, I believe, Mr. Stratton?” he said.
“The elder Taylor, on the day in question, is fully accounted for,” said Hobart. “Young Taylor claims to have passed the night at Willow Springs, alone. But no one saw him from breakfast time the seventeenth till noon on the nineteenth.”
“He rarely ever has any one with him when he’s alone. That may account for them not seeing him at Willow,” suggested Jeff. He did not look at Hobart, but regarded Stratton with an air of deep meditation.
The Register paced the floor slowly, ponderously, with an impressive pause at each turn, tapping his left hand with his eyeglass to score his points. “He had ample time to go to Escondido and return. The envelope in which Mr. Lake’s copy of this office’s decision in the Lake-Taylor contest was enclosed has been examined. It bears unmistakable signs of having been tampered with.” Turning to mark the effect of these tactics, he became aware of his victim’s contemplative gaze. It disconcerted him. He resumed his pacing. Jeff followed him with a steady eye.
“In the same mail I sent Mr. Lake another letter. The envelope was unfortunately destroyed, Mr. Lake suspecting nothing. A map had been substituted for its contents, and they, in turn, were substituted for the decision in the registered letter, with the evident intention of depriving Mr. Lake of his prior right to file.”
“By George! It sounds probable.” Jeff laughed derisively. “So that’s it! And here we all thought Lake let it go out of giddy generosity! My stars, but won’t he get the horse-smile when the boys find out?”
Stratton controlled himself with an effort. “We have decided not to push the case against you if you will tell what you know,” he began.
Jeff lifted his brows. “We? And who’s we? You two? I should have thought this was a post-office lay.”
“We are investigating the affair,” explained Hobart.
“I see! As private individuals. Yes, yes. Does Lake pay you by the day or by the job?”
Stratton, blazing with anger, smote his palm heavily with his fist. “Young man! Young man! Your insolence is unbearable! We are trying to spare you – as you had no direct interest in the matter and doubtless concealed your guilty knowledge through a mistaken and distorted sense of honor. But you tempt us – you tempt us! You don’t seem to realize the precarious situation in which you stand.”
“What I don’t see,” said Jeff, in puzzled tones, “is why you bother to spare me at all. If you can prove this, why don’t you cinch me and Felix both? Why do you want me to tell you what you already know? And if you can’t prove it – who the hell cares what you suspect?”
“We will arrest you,” said Stratton thickly, “just as soon as we can make out the papers!”
“Turn your wolf loose, you four-flushers! You may make me trouble, but you can’t prove anything. Speaking of trouble – how about you, Mr. Stratton?” As a spring leaps, released from highest tension, face and body and voice flashed from passive indolence to sudden, startling attack. His arm lashed swiftly out as if to deliver the swordsman’s stabbing thrust; the poised body followed up to push the stroke home. “You think your secret safe, don’t you? It’s been some time ago.”
Words only – yet it might have been a very sword’s point past Stratton’s guard. For the Register flinched, staggered, his arrogant face grew mottled, his arm went up. He fell back a step, silent, quivering, leaning heavily on a chair. The Marshal gave him a questioning glance. Jeff kept on.
“You’re prominent in politics, business, society, the church. You’ve a family to think of. It’s up to you, Mr. Stratton. Is it worth while? Had we better drop it with a dull, sickening thud?”
Stratton collapsed into the chair, a shapeless bundle, turning a shriveled, feeble face to the Marshal in voiceless imploring.
Unhesitating, Hobart put a hand on his shoulder. “That’s all right, old man! We won’t give you away. Brace up!” He nodded Jeff to the door. “You win!” he said. Leo followed on tiptoe.
“Why, the poor old duck!” said Jeff remorsefully, in the passage. “Wish I hadn’t come down on him so hard. I overdid it that time. Still, if I hadn’t – ”
At the Hondo Bridge Jeff looked back and waved a hand. “Good-by, old town! Now we go, gallopy-trot, gallopy, gallopy-trot!” He sang, and the ringing hoofs kept time and tune,
“Florence Mehitabel Genevieve Jane,She came home in the wind an’ the rain,She came home in the rain an’ the snow;‘Ain’t a-goin’ to leave my home any mo’!’”“Jeff,” said the mystified Ballinger, spurring up beside him, “what has the gray-haired Register done? Has murder stained his hands with gore?”
Jeff raised his bridle hand.
“Gee! Leo, I don’t know! I just taken a chance!”
CHAPTER I
THE PITCHER THAT WENT TO THE WELL
“When I bend my head low and listen at the ground,I can hear vague voices that I used to know,Stirring in dim places, faint and restless sound;I remember how it was when the grass began to grow.”– Song of The Wandering Dust,Anna Hempstead Branch.The pines thinned as she neared Rainbow Rim, the turfy glades grew wider; she had glimpses of open country beyond – until, at last, crossing a little spit of high ground, she came to the fairest spot in all her voyage of exploration and discovery. She sank down on a fallen log with a little sigh of delight.
The steep bank of a little cañon broke away at her feet – a cañon which here marked the frontier of the pines, its farther side overgrown with mahogany bush and chaparral – a cañon that fell in long, sinuous curves from the silent mystery of forest on Rainbow Crest behind her, to widen just below into a rolling land, parked with green-black powderpuffs of juniper and cedar; and so passed on to mystery again, twisting away through the folds of the low and bare gray hills to the westward, ere the last stupendous plunge over the Rim to the low desert, a mile toward the level of the waiting sea.
Facing the explorer, across the little cañon, a clear spring bubbled from the hillside and fell with pleasant murmur and tinkle to a pool below, fringed with lush emerald – a spring massed about with wild grapevine, shining reeds of arrow-weed; a tangle of grateful greenery, jostling eagerly for the life-giving water. Draped in clinging vines, slim acacias struggled up through the jungle; the exquisite fragrance of their purple bells gave a final charm to the fairy chasm.
But the larger vision! The nearer elfin beauty dwindled, was lost, forgotten. Afar, through a narrow cleft in the gray westward hills, the explorer’s eye leaped out over a bottomless gulf to a glimpse of shining leagues midway of the desert greatness – an ever-widening triangle that rose against the peaceful west to long foothill reaches, to a misty mountain parapet, far-beckoning, whispering of secrets, things dreamed of, unseen, beyond the framed and slender arc of vision. A land of enchantment and mystery, decked with strong barbaric colors, blue and red and yellow, brown and green and gray; whose changing ebb and flow, by some potent sorcery of atmosphere, distance and angle, altered, daily, hourly; deepening, fading, combining into new and fantastic lines and shapes, to melt again as swiftly to others yet more bewildering.
The explorer? It may be mentioned in passing that any other would have found that fairest prospect even more wonderful than did the explorer, Miss Ellinor Hoffman. We will attempt no clear description of Miss Ellinor Hoffman. Dusky-beautiful she was; crisp, fresh and sparkling; tall, vigorous, active, strong. Yet she was more than merely beautiful – warm and frank and young; brave and kind and true. Perhaps, even more than soft curves, lips, glory of hair or bewildering eyes, or all together, her chiefest charm was her manner, her frank friendliness. Earth was sweet to her, sweeter for her.
This by way of aside and all to no manner of good. You have no picture of her in your mind. Remember only that she was young —
“The stars to drink from and the sky to dance on”– young and happy, and therefore beautiful; that the sun was shining in a cloudless sky, the south wind sweet and fresh, buds in the willow.
The peace was rent and shivered by strange sounds, as of a giant falling downstairs. There was a crash of breaking boughs beyond the cañon, a glint of color, a swift black body hurtling madly through the shrubbery. The girl shrank back. There was no time for thought, hardly for alarm. On the farther verge the bushes parted; an apparition hurled arching through the sunshine, down the sheer hill – a glorious and acrobatic horse, his black head low between his flashing feet; red nostrils wide with rage and fear; foam flecks white on the black shoulders; a tossing mane; a rider, straight and tall, superb – to all seeming an integral part of the horse, pitch he never so wildly.
The girl held her breath through the splintered seconds. She thrilled at the shock and storm of them, straining muscles and white hoofs, lurching, stumbling, sliding, lunging, careening in perilous arcs. She saw stones that rolled with them or bounded after; a sombrero whirled above the dust and tumult like a dilatory parachute; a six-shooter jolted up into the air. Through the dust-clouds there were glimpses of a watchful face, hair blown back above it; a broken rein snapped beside it, saddle-strings streamed out behind; a supple body that swung from curve to easy curve against shock and plunge, that swayed and poised and clung, and held its desperate dominion still. The saddle slipped forward; with a motion incredibly swift, as a hat is whipped off in a gust of wind, it whisked over withers and neck and was under the furious feet. Swifter, the rider! Cat-quick, he swerved, lit on his feet, leaped aside.
Alas, oh, rider beyond compare, undefeated champion, Pride of Rainbow! Alas, that such thing should be recorded! He leaped aside to shun the black frantic death at his shoulder; his feet were in the treacherous vines: he toppled, grasped vainly at an acacia, catapulted out and down, head first; so lit, crumpled and fell with a prodigious splash into the waters of the pool! Ay di mi, Alhama!
The blankets lay strewn along the hill; but observe that the long lead rope of the hackamore (a “hackamore,” properly jaquima, is, for your better understanding, merely a rope halter) was coiled at the saddle-horn, held there by a stout hornstring. As the black reached the level the saddle was at his heels. To kick was obvious, to go away not less so; but this new terror clung to the maddened creature in his frenzied flight – between his legs, in the air, at his heels, his hip, his neck. A low tree leaned from the hillside; the aërial saddle caught in the forks of it, the bronco’s head was jerked round, he was pulled to his haunches, overthrown; but the tough hornstring broke, the freed coil snapped out at him; he scrambled up and bunched his glorious muscles in a vain and furious effort to outrun the rope that dragged at his heels, and so passed from sight beyond the next curve.
Waist-deep in the pool sat the hatless horseman, or perhaps horseless horseman were the juster term, steeped in a profound calm. That last phrase has a familiar sound; Mark Twain’s, doubtless – but, all things considered, steeped is decidedly the word. One gloved hand was in the water, the other in the muddy margin of the pool: he watched the final evolution of his late mount with meditative interest. The saddle was freed at last, but its ex-occupant still sat there, lost in thought. Blood trickled, unnoted, down his forehead.
The last stone followed him into the pool; the echoes died on the hills. The spring resumed its pleasant murmur, but the tinkle of its fall was broken by the mimic waves of the pool. Save for this troubled sloshing against the banks, the slow-settling dust and the contemplative bust of the one-time centaur, no trace was left to mark the late disastrous invasion.
The invader’s dreamy and speculative gaze followed the dust of the trailing rope. He opened his lips twice or thrice, and spoke, after several futile attempts, in a voice mild, but clearly earnest:
“Oh, you little eohippus!”
The spellbound girl rose. Her hand was at her throat; her eyes were big and round, and her astonished lips were drawn to a round, red O.
Sharp ears heard the rustle of her skirts, her soft gasp of amazement. The merman turned his head briskly, his eye met hers. One gloved hand brushed his brow; a broad streak of mud appeared there, over which the blood meandered uncertainly. He looked up at the maid in silence: in silence the maid looked down at him. He nodded, with a pleasant smile.
“Good-morning!” he said casually.
At this cheerful greeting, the astounded maid was near to tumbling after, like Jill of the song.
“Er – good-morning!” she gasped.
Silence. The merman reclined gently against the bank with a comfortable air of satisfaction. The color came flooding back to her startled face.
“Oh, are you hurt?” she cried.
A puzzled frown struggled through the mud.
“Hurt?” he echoed. “Who, me?.. Why, no – leastwise, I guess not.”
He wiggled his fingers, raised his arms, wagged his head doubtfully and slowly, first sidewise and then up and down; shook himself guardedly, and finally raised tentative boot-tips to the surface. After this painstaking inspection he settled contentedly back again.
“Oh, no, I’m all right,” he reported. “Only I lost a big, black, fine, young, nice horse somehow. You ain’t seen nothing of him, have you?”
“Then why don’t you get out?” she demanded. “I believe you are hurt.”
“Get out? Why, yes, ma’am. Certainly. Why not?” But the girl was already beginning to clamber down, grasping the shrubbery to aid in the descent.
Now the bank was steep and sheer. So the merman rose, tactfully clutching the grapevines behind him as a plausible excuse for turning his back. It followed as a corollary of this generous act that he must needs be lame, which he accordingly became. As this mishap became acute, his quick eyes roved down the cañon, where he saw what gave him pause; and he groaned sincerely under his breath. For the black horse had taken to the parked uplands, the dragging rope had tangled in a snaggy tree-root, and he was tracing weary circles in bootless effort to be free.
Tactful still, the dripping merman hobbled to the nearest shade wherefrom the luckless black horse should be invisible, eclipsed by the intervening ridge, and there sank down in a state of exhaustion, his back to a friendly tree-trunk.
CHAPTER II
FIRST AID
“Oh woman! in our hours of easeUncertain, coy and hard to please;But seen too oft, familiar with thy faceWe first endure, then pity, then embrace!”A moment later the girl was beside him, pity in her eyes.
“Let me see that cut on your head,” she said. She dropped on her knee and parted the hair with a gentle touch.
“Why, you’re real!” breathed the injured near-centaur, beaming with wonder and gratification.
She sat down limply and gave way to wild laughter.
“So are you!” she retorted. “Why, that is exactly what I was thinking! I thought maybe I was asleep and having an extraordinary dream. That wound on your head is not serious, if that’s all.” She brushed back a wisp of hair that blew across her eyes.
“I hurt this head just the other day,” observed the bedraggled victim, as one who has an assortment of heads from which to choose. He pulled off his soaked gloves and regarded them ruefully. “‘Them that go down to deep waters!’ That was a regular triumph of matter over mind, wasn’t it?”
“It’s a wonder you’re alive! My! How frightened I was! Aren’t you hurt – truly? Ribs or anything?”
The patient’s elbows made a convulsive movement to guard the threatened ribs.
“Oh, no, ma’am. I ain’t hurt a bit – indeed I ain’t,” he said truthfully; but his eyes had the languid droop of one who says the thing that is not. “Don’t you worry none about me – not one bit. Sorry I frightened you. That black horse now – ” He stopped to consider fully the case of the black horse. “Well, you see, ma’am, that black horse, he ain’t exactly right plumb gentle.” His eyelids drooped again.
The girl considered. She believed him – both that he was not badly hurt and that the black horse was not exactly gentle. And her suspicions were aroused. His slow drawl was getting slower; his cowboyese broader – a mode of speech quite inconsistent with that first sprightly remark about the little eohippus. What manner of cowboy was this, from whose tongue a learned scientific term tripped spontaneously in so stressful a moment – who quoted scraps of the litany unaware? Also, her own eyes were none of the slowest. She had noted that the limping did not begin until he was clear of the pool. Still, that might happen if one were excited; but this one had been singularly calm, “more than usual ca’m,” she mentally quoted… Of course, if he really were badly hurt – which she didn’t believe one bit – a little bruised and jarred, maybe – the only thing for her to do would be to go back to camp and get help… That meant the renewal of Lake’s hateful attentions and – for the other girls, the sharing of her find… She stole another look at her find and thrilled with all the pride of the discoverer… No doubt he was shaken and bruised, after all. He must be suffering. What a splendid rider he was!
“What made you so absurd? Why didn’t you get out of the water, then, if you are not hurt?” she snapped suddenly.
The drooped lids raised; brown eyes looked steadily into brown eyes.
“I didn’t want to wake up,” he said.
The candor of this explanation threw her, for the moment, into a vivid and becoming confusion. The dusky roses leaped to her cheeks; the long, dark lashes quivered and fell. Then she rose to the occasion.
“And how about the little eohippus?” she demanded. “That doesn’t seem to go well with some of your other talk.”
“Oh!” He regarded her with pained but unflinching innocence. “The Latin, you mean? Why, ma’am, that’s most all the Latin I know – that and some more big words in that song. I learned that song off of Frank John, just like a poll-parrot.”
“Sing it! And eohippus isn’t Latin. It’s Greek.”
“Why, ma’am, I can’t, just now – I’m so muddy; but I’ll tell it to you. Maybe I’ll sing it to you some other time.” A sidelong glance accompanied this little suggestion. The girl’s face was blank and non-committal; so he resumed: “It goes like this:
“Said the little Eohippus,‘I’m going to be a horse,And on my middle fingernailsTo run my earthly course’ —“No; that wasn’t the first. It begins:
“There was once a little animalNo bigger than a fox,And on five toes he scampered —“Of course you know, ma’am – Frank John he told me about it – that horses were little like that, ’way back. And this one he set his silly head that he was going to be a really-truly horse, like the song says. And folks told him he couldn’t – couldn’t possibly be done, nohow. And sure enough he did. It’s a foolish song, really. I only sing parts of it when I feel like that – like it couldn’t be done and I was going to do it, you know. The boys call it my song. Look here, ma’am!” He fished in his vest pocket and produced tobacco and papers, matches – last of all, a tiny turquoise horse, an inch long. “I had a jeweler-man put five toes on his feet once to make him be a little eohippus. Going to make a watch-charm of him sometime. He’s a lucky little eohippus, I think. Peso gave him to me when – never mind when. Peso’s a Mescalero Indian, you know, chief of police at the agency.” He gingerly dropped the little horse into her eager palm.
It was a singularly grotesque and angular little beast, high-stepping, high-headed, with a level stare, at once complacent and haughty. Despite the first unprepossessing rigidity of outline, there was somehow a sprightly air, something endearing, in the stiff, purposed stride, the alert, inquiring ears, the stern and watchful eye. Each tiny hoof was faintly graven to semblance of five tinier toes; there, the work showed fresh.
“The cunning little monster!” Prison grime was on him; she groomed and polished at his dingy sides until the wonderful color shone out triumphant. “What is it that makes him such a dear? Oh, I know. It’s something – well, childlike, you know. Think of the grown-up child that toiled with pride and joy at the making of him – dear me, how many lifetimes since! – and fondly put him by as a complete horse.” She held him up in the sun: the ingrate met her caress with the same obdurate and indomitable glare. She laughed her rapturous delight: “There! How much better you look! Oh, you darling! Aren’t you absurd? Straight-backed, stiff-legged, thick-necked, square-headed – and that ridiculously baleful eye! It’s too high up and too far forward, you know – and your ears are too big – and you have such a malignant look! Never mind; now that you’re all nice and clean, I’m going to reward you.” Her lips just brushed him – the lucky little eohippus.
The owner of the lucky little horse was not able to repress one swift, dismal glance at his own vast dishevelment, nor, as his shrinking hands, entirely of their own volition, crept stealthily to hiding, the slightest upward rolling of a hopeful eye toward the leaping waters of the spring; but, if one might judge from her sedate and matter-of-fact tones, that eloquent glance was wasted on the girl.
“You ought to take better care of him, you know,” she said as she restored the little monster to his owner. Then she laughed. “Hasn’t he a fierce and warlike appearance, though?”
“Sure. That’s resolution. Look at those legs!” said the owner fondly. “He spurns the ground. He’s going somewheres. He’s going to be a horse! And them ears – one cocked forward and the other back, strictly on the cuidado! He’ll make it. He’ll certainly do to take along! Yes, ma’am, I’ll take right good care of him.” He regarded the homely beast with awe; he swathed him in cigarette papers with tenderest care. “I’ll leave him at home after this. He might get hurt. I might sometime want to give him to – somebody.”