Part 33 (1/2)

Promptly Helen made her a present of it. All that she wanted were some things she had left there, a pair of spurs and a bridle; Sanchia was perfectly welcome to the rest.

They all went out together for Sanchia's horse. And Sanchia, accepting the altered battle-ground to which Helen's tactics had driven her, seeing that she was to have little opportunity of getting Longstreet off to herself, began a straight drive at her main objective. She laid an affectionate hand on his arm as though thrown upon that necessity by the irregularities of the trail in which she had stumbled, and turned the battery of her really very pretty eyes upon him. With her eyes she said, boldly yet timidly: 'You splendid man, you have touched my heart!

You n.o.ble creature, you have made Sanchia Murray love you! Generous man, you have come to mean everything to a poor little woman who is lonely!'

It is much to be said in a glance, but Sanchia had never travelled so far on her chosen road of life if she had not learned, long ago, how to put into a look all that she did not feel. And she did not stop with the one look; again she appeared to stumble, again her eyelids fluttered upward, her glance melted into his; again she flashed sufficient message to redden Longstreet's cheeks and make his own eyes burn with embarra.s.sment. And since it was obvious that henceforward the combat must be waged in the open, she did not await the unlikely opportunity of some distant tete-a-tete to emphasize her intention.

Before she mounted she managed to allow the glowingly embarra.s.sed man to hold her two hands; and she told him whisperingly:

'I would to G.o.d that you had come a few years earlier into the life of Sanchia Murray!' She sighed and squeezed his hands. Then she smiled a wan little smile. 'You have come to mean so much, oh, so much, in my poor little lonely existence.'

She mounted and rode away, waving her farewell, looking only at Longstreet. They all saw how, before she reached the bend in the trail, her handkerchief went to her eyes. Longstreet appeared genuinely worried.

'I am sorry for that little woman,' he said thoughtfully.

'She's making love at you, papa,' laughed Helen, as though the matter were of no moment but delightfully ridiculous. 'Fancy Sanchia Murray falling in love with dear old pops!'

He looked at her severely.

'You should not speak lightly of such matters, my dear,' he chided her.

'Mind you, I am not admitting that there is any ground for such a suspicion as you express.'

'But if there were ground for it?'

'Is there any reason why a pretty woman should not fall in love?' he asked her stiffly. 'Further, is your father such a man that no woman could care for him?' He stalked away.

Helen gasped after him and was speechless.

In due course of time Howard recalled that there was a man named Roberts, a teamster in Sanchia's Town; and that on the Desert Valley ranch there were mules which should be sold; and that, though there was a golden paradise here in Bear Valley, there remained a workaday world outside the charmed confines where time was of the essence. He made Helen understand that if he were to make good in his acquisition of the cattle range he must be down there among his men and his herds during every working hour of the day, but that the nights were his own. He was to come up every night that it was possible. She was to guard her father from Sanchia during the days; he was to seek to be on hand if ever the golden news broke again; they two were to check the adventuress' move. And Helen was to keep the spurs and bridle; she was to take Danny not as a loan but as a gift, of which only they were to know; she was to induce her father to ride down to the lower valley to watch the round-up. Then, lingeringly and with many a backward look, Alan Howard went on his way.

He found his man and, while Howard sat sideways in the saddle and Roberts whittled at a stick, they drove their bargain. The mules were sold for two thousand dollars, if they were as Roberts remembered them and as Howard represented them; Roberts would ride down the next day for them and would pay six hundred dollars as the first payment and thereafter not less than two hundred a month. Howard was satisfied.

He would have a little more cash for running expenses or for the purchase of more stock if he could find another chance like that when he had bought the calves from Tony Vaca in French Valley.

The week rolled by, bursting with details requiring quick attention.

Danny was found, roped, saddled and bridled. Longstreet rode him, delighting in the pony's high spirits, more delighted to see how he 'came around.' Gentled sufficiently and reminded that he was no longer a free agent to fling up his heels at the wind and race recklessly where he would, but that he was man's friend and servant, Danny was presented to Helen. He ate sugar that she gave him; he returned bit by bit the impulsive love which she granted him outright. In his new trappings, to which Howard had added a saddle from his own stables, Danny accepted his new honours like a thoroughbred.

Helen rode him the day she and her father came down from the hills for the round-up. Longstreet out-Romaned the Romans: his spurs were the biggest, his yell when he circled a herd was the most piercing, his borrowed chaps struck the eye from afar; his hat was a Stetson and amazingly tall. Now and then, when his horse swerved sharply to head off a racing steer, he came near falling. Once he did fall and rolled wildly through the dust of a corral; but he only continued his occupation with the more vim and was heard to shout over and over: 'It's the life, boys! It's the life!'

Helen, often riding at Howard's side, saw how the herds were brought down from the hills; how they were counted and graded; how the select were driven into the fattest pasture lands. She watched the branding of those few head that had escaped other round-ups. At first she cringed back as she saw the hot iron and the smoke rising from the hides and smelled the scorching hair and flesh. But she came to understand the necessity and further she saw that little pain was inflicted, that the victims though they struggled and bellowed were soon grazing quietly with their fellows. And at last the time had come when she had learned to ride. That was the supreme joy of the moment.

To Howard, no less, was it a joy. He watched her race, with whip whirling over her head, to cut off the lunging attempt at escape made over and over by the wilder cattle; he saw that with every hour her seat in the saddle became more secure; he read that she was not afraid.

He looked forward to long rides, just the two of them, across the billowing sweep of Desert Valley, in the golden time when the t.i.tle rested secure with them, in the time when at last all dreams came true.

Of any world outside their own happy valley they knew little. Sanchia had pitched her tent near the Longstreet camp, but these days she was left very much to herself. They did not pa.s.s through Sanchia's Town on their way back and forth and knew and cared nothing of its activities.

The Longstreets, keenly interested in all that went forward on the ranch, were persuaded to accept Howard's hospitality for three days and nights. They rode early and late; there were the brief before-bedtime talks together; Helen saw the bluebird feather and laughed about it; she claimed it, but was in the end, after a deal of bantering argument, content to leave it where it was. She allowed Howard to talk what she branded as foolishness about certain alterations in the old house which he prophesied would be necessary before long; she grew into the custom of speaking of the room which she had occupied on her first visit to the ranch as 'my room.' She was very happy and forgot that her father was a troublesome childlike parent who fancied that he knew how to discover gold mines. What did mere gold amount to, anyway?

Then came the drive. The pick of the herd were to be moved slowly down to San Juan. Howard had communicated with his former buyers, and they were eager for more of his stock and at the former price. He wanted Helen and her father to come with them. But Longstreet shook his head smilingly.

'I'm two-thirds cowboy now,' he chuckled. 'A few more days of this and I'll be coming to you and asking for a job! It won't do, my boy. It won't do. Especially at a time like this. You make your drive and I'll make mine. And I'll bet you a new twenty-dollar hat that when you get back I'll have found gold again.'