Chapter VI

So there were Rosamond and Janet and the Kid, all tragically unhappy, each in his own way; and Nugent, playing his game according to his own rules, one of which was that a revoke was not a revoke unless it was called, and walking through the collective disapproval of the ranch without recognising that it existed. The boil, in the Old Man’s language, was slowly coming to a head and causing considerable loss of sleep and general misery meanwhile.

Craps in daytime, cards at night occupied the outfit’s leisure.

Slim would stand, bones in his left hand, two fingers of his right extending upward, and beseech, “Allah be Allah, dice be dice!”

Al, squatted on the floor, would pronounce cryptically, “Read’m’n’weep,” which is translated into, “Read them and weep.”

Mrs. Allenby fought her eternal fight with field mice and pack rats. Early rising dudes in wrappers and slippers, clutching soap and towels, hurried to the bath houses to get what one cynical woman termed the first rim on the tub, and here and there some dashing gentleman wore a snake rattle in his hatband.

In a word, the season was well along. And then the boil came to a head. Janet was pretty sick of her own game by that time, and was not sleeping any better than the Kid; but she had, in effect, got a bear by the tail and couldn’t let go. Up to that time, too, Nugent had been skilful enough to keep their companionship on a purely friendly basis. It had not taken him long to find that the girl’s theatrical and worldly contacts had not touched her.

She had, however, definitely resolved to break the thing up. She was surfeited with revenge, and it was dust in her mouth, after all. She hated herself and she was close to hating Nugent. She started out that day, indeed, with the definite intention of making a complete confession and facing an unpleasant hour to save her own soul.

And it may be said for Crosby Nugent that he, too, realised that things could not go on as they were; that he stood ready, in that height of his infatuation, to break with Rosamond and to ask Janet to marry him. Like the Kid the year before, he was carried away by a new type of girl. His imagination was excited. And Janet was a blood-stirring little figure, with her apparently reckless horsemanship and that sort of cool defiance with which she now faced the world.

Any pretext answered with him for a ride with her, and this day he was going gold hunting. He had all the Easterner’s conviction that the mountains of the West were full of hidden wealth, which it required the higher intelligence of the East to discover, and they started for that final ride armed with pan and hammer, saddlebags and luncheon.

Just what happened cannot be known precisely. Apparently they lunched together in amity, and he took up his gold hunting again. They were about ten miles back in the mountains, and had sat down on the edge of a cliff to look over their specimens. The surmise must be that her closeness and their isolation went to his head, and that he commenced to make passionate love to her. All that is absolutely certain is that she undoubtedly pushed him over the edge!

He fell only about twenty feet, and landed on a ledge, but the shock made him furious, and he lost what remained of his temper when he found he could neither get up nor down. He must have said some bitter things then, for it appears that Janet must have sat for a couple of hours or so at the top of the cliff, refusing either to help him or to go and bring help.

Sometime in that two hours they both came to their senses. They were absurd, and they knew it. For him the romance of the West had died with the same thud with which he landed, and the nonsense had gone out of Janet when he disappeared over the cliff face.

The last hour of the two Janet spent in wondering how she was to get help to him without the Kid getting the story, and it is certain that Nugent’s chief thought was to keep Rosamond from knowing about his predicament. Janet had made him ridiculous before her, and his infatuation for her had smashed to pieces along with his pride.

It appears then that when the evening shadows began to fill the cañon below with purple, and the Bishop’s Rock high above was a massively rosy jewel set in gold, Janet went to the cliff edge and called down to him coldly that she was going for a rope; and that Nugent merely nodded, and went on grimly picking splinters out of his hands with the point of his scarfpin.

Janet was frantically determined by that time to effect the rescue herself, and to keep the story from spreading over the ranch. She rode slowly, to arrive as late as possible, and her plan was to reach unperceived the barn where Midge’s stage props were kept, to get her ropes and effect the rescue herself.

She would have succeeded, probably, but for one thing. The Kid was corral dog that night. Checking up at nine o’clock, he had found their two horses missing, and set himself doggedly to wait for them. Riders came in, unsaddled and turned their horses loose, to run on an easy lope to the pasture and the herd. The racks in the saddle house filled up, with the exception of two spaces, and filled with rage, despair and solid fear, the Kid stood with folded arms, staring at the mountains.

From the bunk-house windows came the sound of Slim’s voice, crying, “Hit me! Harder!” followed, not by the sound of blows, but of chips on a wooden table. Their hard day over, the wranglers were playing blackjack. Far away, in the Old Man’s office, shone the green shade of his office lamp as he pored over his accounts. The stable cat rubbed against the Kid’s ankles, caught against his spurs and spat angrily.

At ten o’clock he saw the wavering light of an electric flash coming toward the corral. It was Rosamond. She went first to the saddle house, and then came back to him, turning the light on him as she did so.

“They aren’t back, are they?” she asked.

“No.”

She collapsed on a bench and sat there, twisting her hands together.

“I don’t think they’re coming, Kid.”

“They’ll come, all right.”

“He’s wild about her. He doesn’t take any trouble to hide it.”

The Kid drew a long breath.

“Well, it takes two to make that kind of a bargain,” he said, and relapsed into sullen silence. After a time, however, he roused and said, “I’m going to leave here. Guess I’ll hit the trail for New Mexico—and herd sheep,” he added bitterly. He was, as a cow and horse man, committing himself to the lowest of degradations, but Rosamond had not even heard him.

“You know why it started, don’t you?”

“No, and I don’t care.”

“She’s paying me back for last summer, Kid. Oh, I know the ranch blames him, but any man’s a fool in the hands of any girl if she wants him to be. It was you.”

The Kid was dull with misery, and it was a moment or two before he grasped what she had said. But it brought him no cheer, even then. “I don’t care why she did it. You and I are just out of luck—that’s all.”

“Aren’t you going to put up a fight?”

“No, ma’am,” said the Kid. “If she wants him she can have him. And I wish her luck,” he added bitterly.

“Don’t be silly!” Rosamond snapped. “You and I have made a mess of things, and we’ve got to straighten them out—if we get the chance.” Suddenly she began to cry against the Kid’s shoulder.

“I’m awfully fond of him, Kid,” she wailed. “I’ve got my clothes and everything. And he’s fond of me too. It’s—it’s the altitude or something. When you’re not used to it it makes you different.”

“You tell ’em,” gloomily assented the Kid, and patted her shoulder. After a time he drew himself away and gave her a final brotherly pat.

“Now look here,” he said. “You go back to your cabin and crawl into bed, and I’ll get a horse and wander up the way they went. Chances are their horses got away and they’re walking in.”

Then suddenly he caught her arm.

“Listen!” he said.

A horse was coming in from the cañon trail. Under the cottonwoods a hundred yards away it stopped, and a moment later the Kid had caught Rosamond and pushed her into the shadow of the barn. Some one was coming from the cottonwoods on foot, a shadowy figure which proceeded to do a number of curious things.

First it went to one of the bunk-house windows and looked in. After that it struck a bee line for the barn, and the Kid put an arm across Rosamond’s chest and held her back against the wall. The figure entered the barn, groped there for a time very stealthily, and then emerged and started back toward the cottonwoods.

“Janet!” said the Kid sternly.

The figure started and dropped what it carried. The Kid picked it up and planted himself in front of the figure.

“Now,” he said, “perhaps you’ll explain what you want with a rope this hour of the night.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort!”

“I’ve got the rope.”

“There are other ropes. I dare say that will occur to you in time.”

“Is anybody hurt?”

“No.”

“Where’s Nugent?”

“That’s my affair.”

“Not by a darned sight!” said the Kid furiously. “It’s my business too. I’ve sat back and let you two carry on your fool game about as long as I intend to, and I’m through. I’m going to go and kill him. Where is he?”

“I pushed him over a cliff, and he can’t get back.”

“Why did you push him over a cliff?” demanded the Kid, standing very tall and with his fists clenched.

“He tried to kiss me.”

Certainly Rosamond tasted the ashes of life at that moment. But certainly, too, the tight band which had been around something in the Kid’s left chest for some months gave with a snap, allowing his heart to race madly.

“Janet!” he said softly. “Janet, I—”

“Will you give me my rope, please?”

“What for? Let him stay where he is. He can die and rot there for all I care.”

But here Rosamond gave a little wail, and Janet saw her. She stiffened at once, and threw up her head.

“He’s in the Blue Cañon,” she said. “You and Miss Carter can go and find him.”

But when she started toward her cottage the Kid caught her by the arm.

“Not a bit of it!” he said more cheerfully than he had spoken for months. “You did this, and you’re going to see it through. If you don’t I’ll get the boys, and there’ll be a mouthful of talk going on around this place to-morrow. Think it over! There’s been a good little bit of talk already.”

“Oh, of course, if that’s a threat—”

“Sure it’s a threat, and I’m a bully! I’ve been so damned sick of sitting down and taking my medicine like a gentleman that I’m through being a gentleman, that’s all. How about it?”

Five minutes later a curious party of three rode out of the ranch toward the cañon and headed into the mountains. Of the three, one was softly whistling, one was angrily erect and silent, and one was dabbing at her eyes with a moist handkerchief. They followed the trail in darkness, knowing only of its climbs and steep descents by the inclination of their saddles, until at last they emerged into the upper meadows and starlight.

And there the Kid halted his horse and waited for Janet, to say, out of a clear sky and very virtuously: “There’s no excuse for a girl leading a man on, and then pushing him over a cliff because he tries to kiss her.”

“No,” she retorted. “I didn’t hear of any one going over a cliff last year.”

The Kid could think of no appropriate reply. He rode on, no longer whistling. But in spite of this rebuff his spirits were rising. It seemed quite clear to him that if a girl really loved a man she wouldn’t push him over a cliff. Therefore she didn’t love Nugent. Therefore it was distinctly possible that she might love somebody else. This feeling grew on him, and some time later he made a further overture:

“I made you a present last winter, but when you came back I threw it in the creek.”

“I can’t imagine why,” was Janet’s cold comment.

Thus repulsed, the Kid lapsed into an unhappy silence; but a little farther on he turned his head and spoke back over his shoulder: “It was only something I made out of cow horns. It wouldn’t appeal to you these days, anyhow.”

Janet made no comment, and thus thrown back on himself the Kid’s resentment against Nugent had time to take form and to develop into cold anger. By the time they had reached the place of that gentleman’s temporary incarceration all the bitterness of the summer, against Janet, Rosamond and himself, had crystallised into hatred of Crosby Nugent. That Janet remained cruel and aloof; that Rosamond clung to their heels; that even if she could have cared for him he had nothing to offer Janet but sixty dollars a month, a saddle and himself; that men had looked for the gold in the mountains for forty years and never found it; that he hadn’t eaten any supper—Nugent, when they reached him, was to bear the brunt not only of the thing he knew but of a dozen he had never heard of.

At the edge of the cliff, having tied their horses, the Kid borrowed Rosamond’s flashlight and bent over the edge. Some twenty feet below, sitting sulkily on a rock, below which again the cliff fell a sheer fifty feet, was Nugent. He looked up as the light appeared.

“Who’s there?” he called.

“Are you hurt?”

“Scratched. I can’t get up this infernal wall.”

“Well, there’s no hurry, anyhow,” said the Kid. “There are some of us here who don’t care if you never come back.”

“Go away and let me talk to somebody with sense,” Nugent shouted. “I don’t feel funny, if you do.”

“Sorry, old man,” said the Kid. “Only Miss Carter and Miss Allenby are here, and neither of them wants to talk to you. But you’re mistaken. I wasn’t being funny.”

For the first time it struck Nugent that the atmosphere above was, to put it mildly, hostile. He lost his head and his temper.

“All right. Be as serious as you damned please,” he called angrily, “but get me out. If you haven’t got a rope I’d advise getting one pretty fast.”

The Kid was beginning to enjoy himself.

“What’s the hurry?” he inquired.

Nugent’s position was distinctly inferior but he did the best he could. When he realised that no immediate rescue was being staged, braced against the boulder and facing up, he made an address to the jury above that for length, breadth and strength of language made the Kid hold his ears. When Nugent finally relapsed into breathless silence the Kid sat on the edge of the cliff and swung his legs over.

“Evidently the shock has set him to raving,” he observed. “The question is, is he worth saving, or shall I drop a rock on him?”

Nugent’s reply to that was a request to the Kid to go to perdition, an undiplomatic but excusable speech, which resulted in the Kid’s dropping his contemptuous attitude and reminding him sternly that there were ladies present.

“Now I’ll tell you how the situation lies,” he said in a conversational tone, his long legs dangling over the lip of the cañon. “You’ve been a nuisance on the ranch all summer. You’ve about ridden your horses to death, and that’s a ranch crime. And you’ve swanked about until we’ve had to grab a close hold on ourselves to keep you out of the horse trough. And you’re where you are because you don’t know any more about ladies than you do about horses, and that’s plenty.” The Kid paused, but Nugent remained sulkily silent.

“As the prisoner,” said the Kid, “you’ve got a right to plead.”

The prisoner immediately again consigned the Kid to perdition, and that gentleman smiled.

“I’ll reverse that sentence,” he said. Then he dropped his bantering manner and bent over the edge.

“It’s like this, Nugent. The ranch isn’t going to hold you and me after to-night. And I warn you that after the way you’ve talked I aim to put you in the horse trough before I go to bed. But you’re not getting out of there unless you agree to leave the ranch to-morrow, and that’s flat.”

“Rosamond!” bellowed Mr. Nugent.

“What is it?”

“Let that maniac talk his fool head off if he wants to, or roll rocks down here, as he threatens. You ride down to the ranch and send an outfit up here. I’m not going to stay here all night.”

The Kid was not only beginning to enjoy himself enormously but to grow a trifle drunk with power.

“Rosamond,” he said, “for the sake of our old love, stay where you are.”

There was a shocked silence from below, and then the Kid’s voice again as he bent over.

“Now, Mr. Nugent,” he said, “let’s be calm about this. I’m ready to make terms if you are. I’ve got a rope here, and I’ll snake you out of that place with no more trouble if you think you can make the noon train to-morrow.”

It was now himself that Mr. Nugent would see consigned to perdition before he made any such concession.

“Janet!” he called.

“Miss Janet,” corrected the Kid softly. “Anyhow, I wouldn’t bring her into this. She’s a trifle hasty at times. Put down that rock, Janet!” he called, and Janet, aloof and disapproving, drew herself angrily erect. The action sobered the Kid at once. He bent toward her and lowered his voice.

“Don’t be angry with me, honey,” he said. “I’ve suffered so darned much.”

In the darkness Janet moved closer to the Kid, and for the first time in months her voice to him was the voice of the old Janet, sweet and grave and very, very kind.

“So have I, Kid,” she said.

He caught her hand and kissed it.

Below, Mr. Nugent sat on his rock and considered the situation. He was cold and tired, he was angry, he was afraid to face Rosamond; but most of all he was puzzled.

“I don’t get it,” he said at last in a milder tone. “Where do you come in on this, anyhow?”

“Janet,” said the Kid, swiftly and in a whisper, “where do I come in on this, anyhow?”

“Tell him you’re engaged to me,” said Janet.

The Old Man had not been able to sleep that night, and so he got up and, rather sketchily clad, wandered about the place. The cottages were dark, the lawn deserted, but from the bunk-house windows came the glow of lamplight, and Slim’s plaintive cry, “Hit me again! Harder!”

The Old Man, smiling and clutching his dressing gown about him, stole past and went toward the corral. He went into the barn and moved among the night horses, speaking to them softly.

Suddenly, outside, he heard the sound of horses moving quietly, the rub of saddle leather, the faint clank of metal on metal. The Old Man listened, and then stepped back deeper into the shadows.

There were, he could see, several horses, and the business of unsaddling went on in a silence that was highly mysterious. One after another the freed horses made off for the pasture; one after the other their silent ex-riders carried away saddle, bridle and saddle blanket to the shed. Then, still without speech, the party seemed to divide, and two figures moved off into the darkness and two remained. The two which had gone were feminine, so far as the Old Man could determine in that place of breeched females. The two which remained were undeniably male.

“Now that the women are gone,” said one voice, “we’ll have this out, my friend.”

“Suits me,” said the Kid’s soft drawl. “And I’ve warned you, Mr. Nugent, what I aim to do. I’m going to wash some of your sins away in that horse trough.”

“Try it!”

“I intend to. It may cost me my job, for the Old Man’s orders are pretty strict. He says, ‘Keep your hands off the dudes. You might hurt ’em.’”

“Don’t worry about hurting me,” said Nugent. “I’ve stood a lot of insolence from you to-night, and before I leave here there’s going to be one sick cowboy.”

Very, very stealthily the Old Man moved toward the barn door, and there peered out. Nugent was taking off his coat and the Kid was kicking out of his chaps. When he was free of them he threw them aside and faced Nugent with a smile.

“Better take off your pants too,” he suggested. “The water might spoil ’em.”

Nugent’s answer was a furious rush.

The ranch slept. Out in the pastures which spread over the foothills, wire to wire a mile or two, the horses rested or grazed. A coyote barked from a high red butte. In a cottage down the road Rosamond lay, face down on her bed, and in her own little room Janet was standing before a warped and bleached bit of flotsam from the creek, a strange affair of dingy cow horns on a cracked wooden base, on which she smiled tenderly. And in the barn doorway stood the Old Man, snorting like a war horse with what might or might not have been anger, while before him went on a silent and mighty battle.

Inch by inch Nugent gave way. Inch by inch the Kid fought him back. The dust rose and circled about them. The stable cat brought a mouse and laid it at the Old Man’s feet, but he did not see it. The cat, waiting for approval, heard nothing but a low rumble in the Old Man’s throat, which sounded like but may not have been “Good Kid! Good boy!” And every inch of Nugent’s retirement led straight to the horse trough.

Some two minutes later the Kid, holding furiously to a writhing, splashing figure in the horse trough, felt a hand on his shoulder and looked around. One of his eyes was almost closed, but out of the other he saw trouble, and let go his hold to stand stiffly erect.

“You don’t need to drown a sheep, boy, to kill the vermin on him,” said the Old Man. Then, drawing his dressing gown around him, the Old Man went back to bed.

Some time later the Kid swaggered into the bunk house with the fillet of one of the cook’s best tenderloin steaks over an eye. In answer to tender inquiry he stated that he had bumped into a tree, after which he proceeded to undress and to crawl into bed.

The game went on. The Kid lay still, every inch a man and a good many inches aching. He was very happy, too happy to sleep. The noise went on about him, but he was alone in a great silence, with Janet.

After a time he reached under his pillow and got his mouth organ, and, lying there, softly and plaintively he made music to the song that was in his soul.