Part 44 (1/2)
”Yes, Sam, the chances are that he'll go to the tank alone.”
Whereupon the other started and whispered savagely:
”How'd you know I was thinkin' _that?_”
Hilton laughed lowly and put an arm across Sam's shoulders and they walked at length in the darkness, talking, talking.... The Easterner looked close into McKee's face and flattered and suggested and encouraged....
CHAPTER XX
”WORK AMONG THE HEATHEN”
The chuck wagon had gone, followed by the bed wagon and the cavet, the last made up of one hundred and forty saddle horses, stringing along the road, a solid column of horse flesh. In a day the round-up would be on. Camp was to be made first far down on Coyote Creek and the country from Cathedral Tank eastward would first be ridden.
Outwardly the departure was not so different from others of its sort.
There were rifles on saddles, to be sure, but there was banter and fun.
Still, a spirit prevailed which told that the men were not wholly concerned with the normal business of the range. There were other things, more grim, more serious, than gathering steers and branding calves.
H C hands were not the only ones who rode heavily armed. There were others, skulking on high ridges, watching, waiting. The whole country knew they were there. The eyes of the whole country were on the factions. The ears of the country were strained to catch what sounds of clash might rise. For the coming of that clash was sensed as an impending crash of thunder will be sensed under cloud banked skies.
”I'll be joinin' them tonight or in the morning,” Beck told Jane as the cavalcade disappeared down creek. ”I'm glad there are things to hold me here a few hours longer because I'll be gone a long time an' I'm jealous of the days I have to be away from you.”
”You'll come to say good-bye?”
”If I have to crawl to you!”--as he gave her one of his lingering kisses. ”When I come back from the ride there's something I'd like to talk over with you ... which we ain't mentioned yet.”
”I'll be waiting to talk it over, dear,” she whispered, for she understood.
Not long after Beck had ridden away the Reverend stumped down from the corral to the big ranch house and rapped on the door. Jane was at her desk and looked up in surprise for it was the first time the elder Beal had ever come to her alone.
”I come to ask for aid, ma'am, in what might be termed work among the heathen, though, it is in a sense the task of a home missionary.”
Jane put down her pen and sat back in her chair, trying to hide her amus.e.m.e.nt.
”Yes, Reverend,” in her crisp manner--”I'm interested.”
He blinked and rattled pens in a side pocket of the rusty coat.
”I trust that you will bear with me, ma'am, until I have finished. I have been moved to speak to you for long but have hesitated because it is difficult to present the matter without intruding on privacies.
”An unholy love is being hidden in the solitudes of these hills, a man who is at heart a serpent seeks to corrupt the white soul of a child.
You possess a knowledge of this man which may hold the only hope of salvation for the innocent.”
A feeling of apprehension swept through the girl; with it was suspicion, for though her mind easily fastened on d.i.c.k Hilton as the man referred to, she could connect him with no other woman.
”I trust, ma'am, that you will be charitable in your estimate of my works. It is no more possible for Azariah Beal to go through life with his eyes closed and his powers of deduction dormant than it is for the birds to refrain from flight or the fishes from swimming. I try to do good as I go my way. I realize that it is not in the orthodox manner, that my methods are strange; but my work is among unusual people and the old ways of accomplishment will not produce results any more than the old standards of morality will fit the lives of my people.
”I observed this man, a stranger to the country, in town on my arrival.