Part 11 (1/2)

Quinn did not dance again that night; he withdrew to the piazza, where he kept guard at the window hour after hour. Joe danced with no one but Aggy, and sat beside her between whiles. Lem wandered about, trying not to watch Quinn. He knew his brother too well to remonstrate with him again by so much as a look.

As the night wore on, the hilarity of the company increased, nothing daunted by the sight of a man lying here and there under a bench with a telltale black bottle protruding from his pocket. When the favorite figure of the ”Bird in the Cage” was danced, and the caller-out shouted, ”Bird flies out, and the crow flies in,” everybody in the room, cried ”Caw! caw!” in excellent imitation of the sable-hued fowl thereby typified, and the dancers, conscious of an admiring public, ”swung” and ”sashayed” with increased vehemence. Toward three o'clock Joe was again dancing with Quinn's Aggy, and as the caller-out chanted:

”Swing that girl, that _pretty_ little girl, That _girl_ you left _behind you_!”

he advanced toward her with an air of mock gallantry. At the same moment Bub Quinn stalked into the middle of the set, a sombrero planted firmly on his head, a long cowhide whip in his hand. He seized Aggy by the arm with a grip that must have hurt her, and said, ”I'm going home now; you can do as you d---- please.” A pistol-shot could not have made half the sensation caused by this breach of etiquette; indeed, it would not have been half so unprecedented. Aggy turned with a startled defiance, but at sight of Quinn's face she recoiled.

”I'm all ready to go,” she said sullenly; and too thoroughly cowed to cast even a parting glance at Joe, she hurried away to get ready for her twenty-mile drive. Joe, meanwhile, with perfect composure, provided himself with another partner, and the dance went on. And so the thunder-cloud had withdrawn, and the bolt had not fallen.

It was not until the gray dawn was in the sky that the last of the revellers drove through the cow-yard, and out across the prairie to meet the rising sun.

By the time a second dawn had come the daily routine at the Keith ranch was running in its accustomed grooves. The cows had already been milked, yesterday's b.u.t.ter already packed for s.h.i.+pment, and Joe, surrounded by bustling men and barking dogs, was attending to the departure of the milk-carts for the town. The Keith brothers had a young but thriving dairy-trade, and Joe was a great success in his character of ”boss.”

In a field bordering upon the highway, a mile away from the ranch-house, Lem Keith was plowing. There was something about this pastoral labor which was peculiarly congenial to Lem; perhaps because he did it well.

Not one of the ranch ”hands” could guide the plow with such precision through the loose prairie soil. Certainly, very few of them would have taken the trouble to set up a stake at the end of the furrow with a flying bit of red flannel to steer by. Lem had the habit of plowing with his eyes fixed upon the stake, his shoulders slightly stooping. Yet the sense of what was going on in the sky and on the prairie was never lost.

To-day the sun rose as clear as a bell, flooding the fields with gold.

Lem was plowing from east to west, a quarter-mile furrow. Whether he faced the mountains, answering the sunrise with a crimson glow, or the yellow prairie sea, with bold b.u.t.tes standing out upon it like rock-bound islands, he could not go amiss. His eye met nothing, his thoughts touched upon nothing, which could jar upon his peaceful mood.

The horses plodded steadily on with hanging heads; the plow responded like a live thing to his guidance; he knew that the long narrow furrow he was leaving behind him was as straight as the wake of a boat in still water. After all, ranch life was a fine thing. A man must be the better for breathing such air; a man must be the wiser for living so close to good old Mother Earth; a man must be--hark! Was that Joe's pony galloping across the field? Lem turned. No; the pony was a strange one.

And the rider?

Bub Quinn had leaped to the ground not ten feet from him. He had flung the rein over the neck of his steaming bronco; but he himself was as calm and as cool as though he had not ridden twenty miles before sunrise at a break-neck gallop.

”I've come to settle accounts with you, mister,” Quinn remarked in a drawling voice.

If the fellow had raged and cursed, if he had seemed to be in a pa.s.sion, if his fists had been clenched, or the muscles of his face set, it would not have been so appalling. But this deadly composure, the careless indifference with which he held his pistol in his right hand, while his left hung loosely at his side, was more than terrifying; it was fairly blood-curdling.

Lem's hands had let the reins drop, and the horses had gone plodding on, the plow lurching and swaying at their heels.

For an instant Lem's brain whirled.

Swing that girl, that _pretty_ little girl, That _girl_ you left _behind you_!

His brain seemed to be whirling to the tune of that jingle.

”If you've got anything to say,” drawled Quinn, fingering the trigger, the pistol pointed at Lem's forehead--”if you've got anything to say, now's your chance. Sorry I can't allow you time to make a will,” he added facetiously, ”but I've got to get back to my work.”

Lem's brain was clear now. There were no more jingles in it. Nothing was there but an overwhelming conviction that, if the man did not shoot quickly, Joe might arrive, and show Quinn his mistake. That must not be.

Joe was too fine a fellow to end like this--like this!

Lem Keith was shuddering from head to foot, and his lips were stiff and blue, yet there was an odd, masterful ring in his voice as he cried, ”Make haste, will you, and shoot!”

A shot rang out, and Lem fell, pierced, not by Bub Quinn's bullet, but by the living horror of death. On the furrows beside him Bub Quinn lay stretched, with blood oozing from his right shoulder.

That shot of Joe Keith's, as his pony tore across the plowed field, was long talked of on the prairie. The echo was still ringing in his ears when he sprang to the ground, and knelt beside his brother, searching for a wound. He could find none. He pressed his hand to Lem's heart; his own pulse was pounding so that he could feel no other motion. He lifted his brother's head and laid it against his own breast; he loosened his s.h.i.+rt and chafed his hands. The sun shone straight into the white face, and the eyelids moved.