Bransford of Rainbow Range
The girl sprang up.
“Now I must get some water and wash that head,” she announced briskly.
“Oh, no – I can’t let you do that. I can walk. I ain’t hurt a bit, I keep telling you.” In proof of which he walked to the pool with a palpably clever assumption of steadiness. The girl fluttered solicitous at his elbow. Then she ran ahead, climbed up to the spring and extended a firm, cool hand, which he took shamelessly, and so came to the fairy waterfall.
Here he made himself presentable as to face and hands. It is just possible there was a certain expectancy in his eye as he neared the close of these labors; but if there were it passed unnoted. The girl bathed the injured head with her handkerchief, and brushed back his hair with a dainty caressing motion that thrilled him until the color rose beneath the tan. There was a glint of gray in the wavy black hair, she noted.
She stepped back to regard her handiwork. “Now you look better!” she said approvingly. Then, slightly flurried, not without a memory of a previous and not dissimilar remark of hers, she was off up the hill: whence, despite his shocked protest, she brought back the lost gun and hat.
Her eyes were sparkling when she returned, her face glowing. Ignoring his reproachful gaze, she wrung out her handkerchief, led the patient firmly down the hill and to his saddle, made him trim off a saddle-string, and bound the handkerchief to the wound. She fitted the sombrero gently.
“There! Don’t this head feel better now?” she queried gayly, with fine disregard for grammar. “And now what? Won’t you come back to camp with me? Mr. Lake will be glad to put you up or to let you have a horse. Do you live far away? I do hope you are not one of those Rosebud men. Mr. La – ” She bit her speech off midword.
“No men there except this Mr. Lake?” asked the cowboy idly.
“Oh, yes; there’s Mr. Herbert – he’s gone riding with Lettie – and Mr. White; but it was Mr. Lake who got up the camping party. Mother and Aunt Lot, and a crowd of us girls – La Luz girls, you know. Mother and I are visiting Mr. Lake’s sister. He’s going to give us a masquerade ball when we get back, next week.”
The cowboy looked down his nose for consultation, and his nose gave a meditative little tweak.
“What Lake is it? There’s some several Lakes round here. Is it Lake of Aqua Chiquite – wears his hair décolleté; talks like he had a washboard in his throat; tailor-made face; walks like a duck on stilts; general sort of pouter-pigeon effect?”
At this envenomed description, Miss Ellinor Hoffman promptly choked.
“I don’t know anything about your Aqua Chiquite. I never heard of the place before. He is a banker in Arcadia. He keeps a general store there. You must know him, surely.” So far her voice was rather stern and purposely resentful, as became Mr. Lake’s guest; but there were complications, rankling memories of Mr. Lake – of unwelcome attentions persistently forced upon her. She spoiled the rebuke by adding tartly, “But I think he is the man you mean!” and felt her wrongs avenged.
The cowboy’s face cleared.
“Well, I don’t use Arcadia much, you see. I mostly range down Rainbow River. Arcadia folks – why, they’re mostly newcomers, health-seekers and people just living on their incomes – not working folks much, except the railroaders and lumbermen. Now about getting home. You see, ma’am, some of the boys are riding down that way” – he jerked his thumb to indicate the last flight of the imperfectly gentle horse – “and they’re right apt to see my runaway eohippus and sure to see the rope-drag; so they’ll likely amble along the back track to see how much who’s hurt. So I guess I’d better stay here. They may be along most any time. Thank you kindly, just the same. Of course, if they don’t come at all – Is your camp far?”
“Not – not very,” said Ellinor. The mere fact was that Miss Ellinor had set out ostensibly for a sketching expedition with another girl, had turned aside to explore, and exploring had fetched a circuit that had left her much closer to her starting-place than to her goal. He misinterpreted the slight hesitation.
“Well, ma’am, thank you again; but I mustn’t be keeping you longer. I really ought to see you safe back to your camp; but – you’ll understand – under the circumstances – you’ll excuse me?”
He did not want to implicate Mr. Lake, so he took a limping step forward to justify his rudeness.
“And you hardly able to walk? Ridiculous! What I ought to do is to go back to camp and get some one – get Mr. White to help you.” Thus, at once accepting his unspoken explanation, and offering her own apology in turn, she threw aside the air of guarded hostility that had marked the last minutes and threw herself anew into this joyous adventure. “When – or if – your friends find you, won’t it hurt you to ride?” she asked, and smiled deliberate encouragement.
“I can be as modest as anybody when there’s anything to be modest about; but in this case I guess I’ll now declare that I can ride anything that a saddle will stay on… I reckon,” he added reflectively, “the boys’ll have right smart to say about me being throwed.”
“But you weren’t thrown! You rode magnificently!” Her eyes flashed admiration.
“Yes’m. That’s what I hoped you’d say,” said the admired one complacently. “Go on, ma’am. Say it again.”
“It was splendid! The saddle turned – that’s all!”
He slowly surveyed the scene of his late exploit.
“Ye – es, that was some riding – for a while,” he admitted. “But you see, that saddle now, scarred up that way – why, they’ll think the eohippus wasted me and then dragged the saddle off under a tree. Leastways, they’ll say they think so, frequent. Best not to let on and to make no excuses. It’ll be easier that way. We’re great on guying here. That’s most all the fun we have. We sure got this joshing game down fine. Just wondering what all the boys’d say – that was why I didn’t get out of the water at first, before – before I thought I was asleep, you know.”
“So you’ll actually tell a lie to keep from being thought a liar? I’m disappointed in you.”
“Why, ma’am, I won’t say anything. They’ll do the talking.”
“It’ll be deceitful, just the same,” she began, and checked herself suddenly. A small twinge struck her at the thought of poor Maud, really sketching on Thumb Butte, and now disconsolately wondering what had become of lunch and fellow-artist; but she quelled this pang with a sage thought of the greatest good to the greatest number, and clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, what a silly I am, to be sure! I’ve got a lunch basket up there, but I forgot all about it in the excitement. I’m sure there’s plenty for two. Shall I bring it down to you or can you climb up if I help you? There’s water in the canteen – and it’s beautiful up there.”
“I can make it, I guess,” said the invited guest – the consummate and unblushing hypocrite. Make it he did, with her strong hand to aid; and the glen rang to the laughter of them. While behind them, all unnoted, Johnny Dines reined up on the hillside; took one sweeping glance at that joyous progress, the scarred hillside, the saddle and the dejected eohippus in the background; grinned comprehension, and discreetly withdrew.
CHAPTER III
MAXWELTON BRAES
“Oh the song – the song in the blood!Magic walks the forest; there’s bewitchment on the air —Spring is at the flood!”– The Gypsy Heart.“Well, sir, this here feller, he lit a cigarette an’ throwed away the match, an’ it fell in a powder kaig; an’ do you know, more’n half that powder burned up before they could put it out! Yes, sir!”
– Wildcat Thompson.Ellinor opened her basket and spread its tempting wares with pretty hostly care – or is there such a word as hostessly?
“There! All ready, Mr. – I declare, this is too absurd! We don’t even know each other’s names!” Her conscious eye fell upon the ampleness of the feast – amazing, since it purported to have been put up for one alone; and her face lit up with mischievous delight. She curtsied. “If you please, I’m the Ultimate Consumer!”
He rose, bowing gravely.
“I am the Personal Devil. Glad to meet you.”
“Oh! I’ve heard of you!” remarked the Ultimate Consumer sweetly. She sat down and extended her hand across the spotless linen. “Mr. Lake says – ”
The Personal Devil flushed. It was not because of the proffered hand, which he took unhesitatingly and held rather firmly. The blush was unmistakably caused by anger.
“There is no connection whatever,” he stated, grimly enough, “between the truth and Mr. Lake’s organs of speech.”
“Oh!” cried the Ultimate Consumer triumphantly. “So you’re Mr. Beebe?”
“Bransford – Jeff Bransford,” corrected the Personal Devil crustily. He wilfully relapsed to his former slipshod speech. “Beebe, he’s gone to the Pecos work, him and Ballinger. Mr. John Wesley Also-Ran Pringle’s gone to Old Mexico to bring back another bunch of black, long-horned Chihuahuas. You now behold before you the last remaining Rose of Rosebud. But, why Beebe?”
“Why does Mr. Lake hate all of you so, Mr. Bransford?”
“Because we are infamous scoundrels. Why Beebe?”
“I can’t eat with one hand, Mr. Bransford,” she said demurely. He looked at the prisoned hand with a start and released it grudgingly. “Help yourself,” said his hostess cheerfully. “There’s sandwiches, and roast beef and olives, for a mild beginning.”
“Why Beebe?” he said doggedly.
“Help yourself to the salad and then please pass it over this way. Thank you.”
“Why Beebe?”
“Oh, very well then! Because of the little eohippus, you know – and other things you said.”
“I see!” said the aggrieved Bransford. “Because I’m not from Ohio, like Beebe, I’m not supposed – ”
“Oh, if you’re going to be fussy! I’m from California myself, Mr. Bransford. Out in the country at that. Don’t let’s quarrel, please. We were having such a lovely time. And I’ll tell you a secret. It’s ungrateful of me, and I ought not to; but I don’t care – I don’t like Mr. Lake much since we came on this trip. And I don’t believe – ” She paused, pinkly conscious of the unconventional statement involved in this sudden unbelief.
“ – what Lake says about us?” A much-mollified Bransford finished the sentence for her.
She nodded. Then, to change the subject:
“You do speak cowboy talk one minute – and all booky, polite and proper the next, you know. Why?”
“Bad associations,” said Bransford ambiguously. “Also for ’tis my nature to, as little dogs they do delight to bark and bite. That beef sure tastes like more.”
“And now you may smoke while I pack up,” announced the girl when dessert was over, at long last. “And please, there is something I want to ask you about. Will you tell me truly?”
“Um – you sing?”
“Yes – a little.”
“If you will sing for me afterward?”
“Certainly. With pleasure.”
“All right, then. What’s the story about?”
Ellinor gave him her eyes. “Did you rob the post-office at Escondido – really?”
Now it might well be embarrassing to be asked if you had committed a felony; but there was that behind the words of this naïve query – in look, in tone, in mental attitude – an unflinching and implicit faith that, since he had seen fit to do this thing, it must needs have been the right and wise thing to do, which stirred the felon’s pulses to a pleasant flutter and caused a certain tough and powerful muscle to thump foolishly at his ribs. The delicious intimacy, the baseless faith, was sweet to him.
“Sure, I did!” he answered lightly. “Lake is one talkative little man, isn’t he? Fie, fie! But, shucks! What can you expect? ‘The beast will do after his kind.’”
“And you’ll tell me about it?”
“After I smoke. Got to study up some plausible excuses, you know.”
She studied him as she packed. It was a good face – lined, strong, expressive, vivid; gay, resolute, confident, alert – reckless, perhaps. There were lines of it disused, fallen to abeyance. What was well with the man had prospered; what was ill with him had faded and dimmed. He was not a young man – thirty-seven, thirty-eight – (she was twenty-four) – but there was an unquenchable boyishness about him, despite the few frosty hairs at his temples. He bore his hard years jauntily: youth danced in his eyes. The explorer nodded to herself, well pleased. He was interesting – different.
The tale suffered from Bransford’s telling, as any tale will suffer when marred by the inevitable, barbarous modesty of its hero. It was a long story, cozily confidential; and there were interruptions. The sun was low ere it was done.
“Now the song,” said Jeff, “and then – ” He did not complete the sentence; his face clouded.
“What shall I sing?”
“How can I tell? What you will. What can I know about good songs – or anything else?” responded Bransford in sudden moodiness and dejection – for, after the song, the end of everything! He flinched at the premonition of irrevocable loss.
The girl made no answer. This is what she sang. No; you shall not be told of her voice. Perhaps there is a voice that you remember, that echoes to you through the dusty years. How would you like to describe that?
“Oh, Sandy has monie and Sandy has land,And Sandy has housen, sae fine and sae grand —But I’d rather hae Jamie, wi’ nocht in his hand,Than Sandy, wi’ all of his housen and land.“My father looks sulky; my mither looks soor;They gloom upon Jamie because he is poor.I lo’e them baith dearly, as a docther should do;But I lo’e them not half sae weel, dear Jamie, as you!“I sit at my cribbie, I spin at my wheel;I think o’ the laddie that lo’es me sae weel.Oh, he had but a saxpence, he brak it in twa,And he gied me the half o’t ere he gaed awa’!“He said: ‘Lo’e me lang, lassie, though I gang awa’!’He said: ‘Lo’e me lang, lassie, though I gang awa’!’Bland simmer is cooming; cauld winter’s awa’,And I’ll wed wi’ Jamie in spite o’ them a’!”Jeff’s back was to a tree, his hat over his eyes. He pushed it up.
“Thank you,” he said; and then, quite directly: “Are you rich?”
“Not – very,” said Ellinor, a little breathless at the blunt query.
“I’m going to be rich,” said Jeff steadily.
“‘I’m going to be a horse,’ quoth the little eohippus.” The girl retorted saucily, though secretly alarmed at the import of this examination.
“Ex-actly. So that’s settled. What is your name?”
“Hoffman.”
“Where do you live, Hoffman?”
“Ellinor,” supplemented the girl.
“Ellinor, then. Where do you live, Ellinor?”
“In New York – just now. Not in town. Upstate. On a farm. You see, grandfather’s growing old – and he wanted father to come back.”
“New York’s not far,” said Jeff.
A sudden panic seized the girl. What next? In swift, instinctive self-defense she rose and tripped to the tree where lay her neglected sketch-book, bent over – and started back with a little cry of alarm. With a spring and a rush, Jeff was at her side, caught her up and glared watchfully at bush and shrub and tufted grass.
“Mr. Bransford! Put me down!”
“What was it? A rattlesnake?”
“A snake? What an idea! I just noticed how late it was. I must go.”
Crestfallen, sheepishly, Mr. Bransford put her down, thrust his hands into his pockets, tilted his chin and whistled an aggravating little trill from the Rye twostep.
“Mr. Bransford!” said Ellinor haughtily.
Mr. Bransford’s face expressed patient attention.
“Are you lame?”
Mr. Bransford’s eye estimated the distance covered during the recent snake episode, and then gave to Miss Hoffman a look of profound respect. His shoulders humped up slightly; his head bowed to the stroke: he stood upon one foot and traced the Rainbow brand in the dust with the other.
“I told you all along I wasn’t hurt,” he said aggrieved. “Didn’t I, now?”
“Are you lame?” she repeated severely, ignoring his truthful saying.
“‘Not – very.’” The quotation marks were clearly audible.
“Are you lame at all?”
“No, ma’am – not what you might call really lame. Uh – no, ma’am.”
“And you deceived me like that!” Indignation checked her. “Oh, I am so disappointed in you! That was a fine, manly thing for you to do!”
“It was such a lovely time,” observed the culprit doggedly. “And such a chance might never happen again. And it isn’t my fault I wasn’t hurt, you know. I’m sure I wish I was.”
She gave him an icy glare.
“Now see what you’ve done! Your men haven’t come and you won’t stay with Mr. Lake. How are you going to get home? Oh, I forgot – you can walk, as you should have done at first.”
The guilty wretch wilted yet further. He shuffled his feet; he writhed; he positively squirmed. He ventured a timid upward glance. It seemed to give him courage. Prompted, doubtless, by the same feeling which drives one to dive headlong into dreaded cold water, he said, in a burst of candor:
“Well, you see, ma’am, that little horse now – he really ain’t got far. He got tangled up over there a ways – ”
The girl wheeled and shot a swift, startled glance at the little eohippus on the hillside, who had long since given over his futile struggles and was now nibbling grass with becoming resignation. She turned back to Bransford. Slowly, scathingly, she looked him over from head to foot and slowly back again. Her expression ran the gamut – wonder, anger, scorn, withering contempt.
“I think I hate you!” she flamed at him.
Amazement triumphed over the other emotions then – a real amazement: the detected impostor had resumed his former debonair bearing and met her scornful eye with a slow and provoking smile.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said reassuringly. “On the contrary, you don’t hate me at all!”
“I’m going home, anyhow,” she retorted bitterly. “You may draw your own conclusions.”
Still, she did not go, which possibly had a confusing effect upon his inferences.
“Just one minute, ma’am, if you please. How did you know so pat where the little black horse was? I didn’t tell you.”
Little waves of scarlet followed each other to her burning face.
“I’m not going to stay another moment. You’re detestable! And it’s nearly sundown.”
“Oh, you needn’t hurry. It’s not far.”
She followed his gesture. To her intense mortification she saw the blue smoke of her home campfire flaunting up from a gully not half a mile away. It was her turn to droop now. She drooped.
There was a painful silence. Then, in a far-off, hard, judicial tone:
“How long, ma’am, if I may ask, have you known that the little black horse was tangled up?”
Miss Ellinor’s eyes shifted wildly. She broke a twig from a mahogany bush and examined the swelling buds with minutest care.
“Well?” said her ruthless inquisitor sternly.
“Since – since I went for your hat,” she confessed in a half whisper.
“To deceive me so!” Pain, grief, surprise, reproach, were in his words. “Have you anything to say?” he added sadly.
A slender shoe peeped out beneath her denim skirt and tapped on a buried boulder. Ellinor regarded the toetip with interest and curiosity. Then, half-audibly:
“We were having such a good time… And it might never happen again!”
He captured both her hands. She drew back a little – ever so little; she trembled slightly, but her eyes met his frankly and bravely.
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