Part 12 (1/2)

SIR,--In reply to the hogwash you have kindly exuded in your letter of to-day, I have to inform you that you can have what you ask for Miss Wells, and perhaps a trifle on your own account, by calling this afternoon on--Yours truly--

”Now, sign it,” continued Rice, handing him the pencil.

”But this will look as if we were angry and wanted to keep the plants,”

protested Wells.

”Never you mind, sonny, but sign! Leave the rest to your partners, and when you lay your head on your pillow to-night return thanks to an overruling Providence for providing you with the right gang of ruffians to look after you!”

Wells signed reluctantly, and Wyngate offered to find a Chinaman in the gulch who would take the missive. ”And being a Chinaman, Brown can do any cussin' or buck talk THROUGH him!” he added.

The afternoon wore on; the tall Douglas pines near the water pools wheeled their long shadows round and halfway up the slope, and the sun began to peer into the faces of the reclining men. Subtle odors of mint and southern-wood, stragglers from the garden, bruised by their limbs, replaced the fumes of their smoked-out pipes, and the hammers of the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs were busy in the grove as they lay lazily nibbling the fragrant leaves like peaceful ruminants. Then came the sound of approaching wheels along the invisible highway beyond the buckeyes, and then a halt and silence. Rice rose slowly, bright pin points in the pupils of his gray eyes.

”Bringin' a wagon with him to tote the hull shanty away,” suggested Wyngate.

”Or fetched his own ambulance,” said Briggs.

Nevertheless, after a pause, the wheels presently rolled away again.

”We'd better go and meet him at the gate,” said Rice, hitching his revolver holster nearer his hip. ”That wagon stopped long enough to put down three or four men.”

They walked leisurely but silently to the gate. It is probable that none of them believed in a serious collision, but now the prospect had enough possibility in it to quicken their pulses. They reached the gate. But it was still closed; the road beyond it empty.

”Mebbe they've sneaked round to the cabin,” said Briggs, ”and are holdin' it inside.”

They were turning quickly in that direction, when Wyngate said, ”Hus.h.!.+--some one's there in the brush under the buckeyes.”

They listened; there was a faint rustling in the shadows.

”Come out o' that, Brown--into the open. Don't be shy,” called out Rice in cheerful irony. ”We're waitin' for ye.”

But Briggs, who was nearest the wood, here suddenly uttered an exclamation,--”B'gos.h.!.+” and fell back, open-mouthed, upon his companions. They too, in another moment, broke into a feeble laugh, and lapsed against each other in sheepish silence. For a very pretty girl, handsomely dressed, swept out of the wood and advanced towards them.

Even at any time she would have been an enchanting vision to these men, but in the glow of exercise and sparkle of anger she was bewildering.

Her wonderful hair, the color of freshly hewn redwood, had escaped from her hat in her pa.s.sage through the underbrush, and even as she swept down upon them in her majesty she was jabbing a hairpin into it with a dexterous feminine hand.

The three partners turned quite the color of her hair; Jackson Wells alone remained white and rigid. She came on, her very short upper lip showing her white teeth with her panting breath.

Rice was first to speak. ”I beg--your pardon, Miss--I thought it was Brown--you know,” he stammered.

But she only turned a blighting brown eye on the culprit, curled her short lip till it almost vanished in her scornful nostrils, drew her skirt aside with a jerk, and continued her way straight to Jackson Wells, where she halted.

”We did not know you were--here alone,” he said apologetically.

”Thought I was afraid to come alone, didn't you? Well, you see, I'm not.

There!” She made another dive at her hat and hair, and brought the hat down wickedly over her eyebrows. ”Gimme my plants.”

Jackson had been astonished. He would have scarcely recognized in this willful beauty the red-haired girl whom he had boyishly hated, and with whom he had often quarreled. But there was a recollection--and with that recollection came an instinct of habit. He looked her squarely in the face, and, to the horror of his partners, said, ”Say please!”

They had expected to see him fall, smitten with the hairpin! But she only stopped, and then in bitter irony said, ”Please, Mr. Jackson Wells.”

”I haven't dug them up yet--and it would serve you just right if I made you get them for yourself. But perhaps my friends here might help you--if you were civil.”