Part 14 (1/2)

”What, at the ranch?”

Rankin paused to take account with his conscience. Being a downeaster, he liked to keep on good terms with that monitor. But conscience had no fault to find as he presently answered, ”Yes, at the ranch.”

He strode out of the court-house with a tread very different from his usual slouching gait. Out in the shed he found his bronco sniffing ruefully at an empty dinner-bag. But she whinnied pleasantly at his approach. Five minutes later horse and rider were off at a swinging pace, headed, not for their own ranch, which lay twelve miles to the northward. Straight in the teeth of the wind they travelled; in the teeth of the south wind, that stung their faces like a whiplash.

Before very long they sighted the Rumpety wagon showing plainly against the snow in the starlight. The road went most of the way down-hill, and wagon and bronco made good speed. The air grew colder every minute.

”About ten below, shouldn't you say, Pincher?”

Pincher tossed her tousled mane affirmatively.

They kept about forty yards behind the team, which went at a steady rate.

”I say, Pincher, the old beast must be laying it onto them horses, to make 'em go like that.”

This time Pincher merely laid an ear back in token of sympathy.

”We'll give him a worse trouncing than that, though. Eh, Pincher?”

And Rankin fumbled with cold fingers at the whip-handle in his pocket.

The reins lay across Pincher's neck. Rankin did not want his hands to get too cold ”for business.”

On and on they pounded through the snow; colder and colder it grew.

There was a s.h.i.+ver in the stars themselves, and only the snow looked warm.

”If I wasn't so all-fired mad, Pincher, I believe 't would seem kind o'

cold.”

At these words Pincher took a spurt and had to be held in, lest they should overtake the wagon.

They had crossed the railroad, leaving Wolverton with its handful of twinkling lights to the eastward, and now a line of the Peak was gleaming, a narrow white crescent, above the long, low rise of ground to the west. Once they pa.s.sed a depression through which the great dome of snow towered in all its grandeur; but that was only for a moment.

Rankin's heart beat high at sight of it.

”There's a way out of 'most every place,” he muttered, below his breath.

The last three miles of the way the cold had got such a grip on him that he desisted from further social amenities. Pincher quite understood his silence, though she, with her furry coat and hard exercise, was not as near freezing as he.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”THE GREAT DOME OF SNOW TOWERED IN ALL ITS GRANDEUR.”]

At length they perceived, close to the road, a dim light s.h.i.+ning from a single point in a huddled group of buildings. The wagon turned into a corral, close to a tumble-down shanty, and as Rankin rode up to the opening the children were just disappearing in at the door, while the woman slowly and painfully climbed down over the wheel. Rumpety stood by, jeering at her slow progress.

”Come, horry a little, me foine lady,” Rankin heard him say. ”Horry, or I'll come and give ye a lift ye'll not thank me for!”

The poor creature's dress had caught in something, and she stood an instant on the hub.

With a sudden movement the brute raised the long whip he held in his hand and gave her a stinging blow across the shoulders. There was a faint moan, a sound of tearing cotton, and the woman fell in a heap to the ground. In another instant she had scrambled to her feet and fled limping into the house.

Ed Rankin felt the blood rush to his heart and then go tingling down into his finger-tips; but he made no sound nor sudden movement. With his teeth set hard, his hand clutching his cowhide whip, he got off his horse and stood on the ground.