Out of the Depths: A Romance of Reclamation. Bennet Robert Ames
She stared as Rocket swept up into view, covering the ground with a long-strided trot.
Ashton waved to her. She waved back. A few moments later they were close together. As she spun her pony around, he pulled in his horse to a walk, patting the beast’s neck and speaking to him caressingly.
“Back already?” she asked. “Surely, you’ve not been to Stockchute–Yes, you have!” Her experienced eye was taking in every indication of his horse’s condition. “He’s been traveling; but you’ve handled him well.”
“He’s grand!” said Ashton. “Been putting him through his paces. I suppose he is your father’s best mount.”
“Daddy and Kid ride him when they’re in a hurry or there’s no other horse handy.”
“You can’t mean–? Then perhaps I can have him again occasionally.”
“You like him, really?”
“All he needs is a little management,” replied Ashton, again patting the horse’s lean neck.
“If you wish to take him in hand, I’ll assign him to you. No one else wants him.”
“As your rural deliveryman’s mount–” began Ashton. He stopped to show the bulging bag slung under his arm. “Here’s the mail. Do you wish your letters now?”
“Thank you, no.”
“Here is this, however,” he said, handing her a folded slip of paper.
She opened it and looked at the writing inside. It was a receipt from the postmaster at Stockchute to Lafayette Ashton for certain letters delivered for mailing. The address of the letter to Thomas Blake was given in full. The girl colored, bit her lip, and murmured contritely: “You have turned the tables on me. I deserved it!”
“Please don’t take it that way!” he begged. “My purpose was merely to assure you the letter was mailed. After all, I am a stranger, Miss Knowles.”
“No, not now,” she differed.
“It’s very kind of you to say it! Yet it’s just as well for me to start off with no doubts in your mind, in view of the fact that in two or three weeks–”
“Yes?” she asked, as he hesitated.
“I–Your father will hardly keep me more than two weeks, unless–unless I make good,” he answered.
“I guess you needn’t worry about that,” she replied, somewhat ambiguously.
He shrugged. “It is very good of you to say it, Miss Knowles. I know I shall fail. Can you expect anyone who has always lived within touch of millions, one who has spent more in four years at college than all this range is worth–He cut my allowance repeatedly, until it was only a beggarly twenty-five thousand.”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars!” exclaimed Isobel. “You had all that to–to throw away in a single year?”
“He cut me down to it the last year–a mere bagatelle to what I had all the time I was at college and Tech.,” replied Ashton, his eyes sparkling at the recollection. “He wished me to get in thick with the New Yorkers, the sons of the Wall Street leaders. He gave me leave to draw on him without limit. I did what he wished me to do,–I got in with the most exclusive set. Ah-h!–the way I made the dollars fly! Before I graduated I was the acknowledged leader. What’s more, I led my class, too–when I chose.”
“When you chose!” she echoed. “And now what are you going to do?”
The question punctured his reminiscent elation. He sagged down in his saddle. “I don’t know,” he answered despondently. “Mon Dieu! To come down to this–a common laborer for wages–after that! When I think of it–when I think of it!”
“You are not to think of it again!” she commanded with kindly severity. “What you are to remember all the time is that you are now a man and honestly earning your own living, and no longer a–a leech battening on the sustenance produced by others.”
He winced. “Was that my fault?”
“No, it was your father’s. I marvel that he did not utterly ruin you.”
“He has! In his last will he cuts me off with only a dollar.”
“So that was it?–And you think that ruined you? I say it saved you!” she went on with the same kindly severity. “You were a parasite. Now the chance is yours to prove that you have the makings of a man. You have started to prove it. You shall not stop proving it. You are not going to be a quitter.”
“No!” he declared, straightening under her bright gaze. “I will not quit. I will try my best to make good as long as the chance is given me.”
“Now you’re talking!” she commended him breezily.
“How could I do otherwise when you asked me?” he replied with a grave sincerity far more complimentary than mere gallantry.
She colored with pleasure and began to tell him of the cattle and their ways.
When they reached the corral she complimented him in turn by allowing him to offsaddle her horse. They walked on down to the house and seated themselves in the porch. As he opened the bag of mail for her she noticed that her hand was empty and turned to look back towards the corral.
“Your receipt from the postmaster,” she remarked; “I must have dropped it.”
He sprang up. “If you wish to keep it, I shall go back and find it for you.”
“No, oh, no; unless you want it yourself,” she replied.
“Not I. The matter is closed, thanks to your kindness,” he declared, again seating himself.
He was right, in so far as they were concerned. Yet the matter was not closed. That evening, when Knowles and Gowan returned from their day of range riding, the younger man noticed a crumpled slip of paper lying against the foot of the corral post below the place where he tossed up his saddle. He picked it up and looked to see if it was of any value. An oath burst from his thin-drawn lips.
“Shut up, Kid!” remonstrated Knowles. “I’m no more squeamish than most, but you know I don’t like any cussing so near Chuckie.”
“Look at this!” cried Gowan–“Enough to make anybody cuss!”
He thrust out the slip of paper close before his employer’s eyes. Knowles took it and read it through with deliberate care.
“Well?” he said. “It’s a receipt from the postmaster to Ashton for those letters I sent over by him. What of it?”
“Your letters?” asked Gowan, taken aback. “Did you write that one what is most particularly mentioned, the one to that big engineer Blake?”
“No. What would I be doing, writing to him or any engineer? They’re just the people I don’t want to have any doings with.”
“Then if you didn’t write him, who did?” questioned Gowan, his mouth again tightening.
“Why, I reckon you’ll have to do your own guessing, Kid–unless it might be Ashton did it.”
“That’s one leg roped,” said Gowan. “Can you guess why he’d be writing to that engineer?”
“Lord, no. He may have the luck to know him. Mr. Blake is a mighty big man, judging from all accounts; but money stands for a lot in the cities and back East, and Ashton’s father is one of the richest men in Chicago. I looked it up in the magazine that told about his helping to back the Zariba Dam project.”
“That’s another leg noosed–on the second throw,” said Gowan. “Another try or two, and we’ll have the skunk ready for hog-tying.”
“How’s that?” exclaimed the cowman. “You’ve got something up your sleeve.”
“No, it’s that striped skunk that’s doing the crooked playing,” snapped Gowan. “Can’t you savvy his game? It’s all a frame-up–his sending off his guide and outfit,