The "Wild West" Collection. William MacLeod Raine
"Why do I do it?"
"Because you know it's right. The cattlemen had the range first. Their living is tied up in cattle, and your sheep are ruining the feed for them. Yesterday when I was out riding I counted the bones of eight dead cows."
He nodded gravely. "Yes, in this country sheep are death to cows. I hate to be a quitter, but I hate worse to take the bread out of the mouths of a dozen families. Two days ago I had an offer for my whole bunch, and to-morrow I'm going to take the first instalment over the pass and drive them down to the railroad."
"But you'll have to cross the dead line to get over the pass," she said quickly; for all Cattleland knew that a guard had been watching his herds to see they did not cross the pass.
"Yes. I'm going to send Alan with a letter to Farnum. I don't think there will be any opposition to my crossing it when my object is understood," he smiled.
Melissy watched him ride away, strong and rugged and ungraceful, from the head to the heel of him a man. Life had gone hard with him. She wondered whether that were the reason her heart went out to him so warmly.
As she moved about her work that day and the next little snatches of song broke from her, bubbling forth like laughter, born of the quiet happiness within, for which she could give no reason.
After the stage had gone she saddled her pony and rode toward the head of the pass. In an hour or two now the sheep would be pouring across the divide, and she wanted to get a photograph of them as they emerged from the pass. She was following an old cattle trail which ran into the main path just this side of the pass, and she was close to the junction when the sound of voices stopped her. Some instinct made her wait and listen.
The speakers were in a dip of the trail just ahead of her, and the voice of the first she recognized as belonging to the man Boone. The tone of it was jubilantly cruel.
"No, sir. You don't move a step of the way, not a step, Mr. Alan McKinstra. I've got him right where I want him, and I don't care if you talk till the cows come home."
Alan's voice rang out indignantly, "It's murder then--just plain, low-down murder. If you hold me here and let Morse fall into a death trap without warning him, you're as responsible as if you shot him yourself."
"All right. Suits me down to the ground. We'll let it go at that. I'm responsible. If you want the truth flat and plain, I don't mind telling you that I wouldn't be satisfied if I wasn't responsible. I'm evening up some little things with Mr. Morse to-day."
Melissy needed to hear no more to understand the situation, but if she had, the next words of Boone would have cleared it up.
"When I met up with you and happened on the news that you was taking a message to Farnum, and when I got onto the fact that Morse, as you call him, was moving his sheep across the dead line, _relying on you having got his letter to the cattlemen to make it safe_, it seemed luck too good to be true. All I had to do was to persuade you to stay right here with me, and Mr. Morse would walk into the pass and be wiped out. You get the beauty of it, my friend, don't you? _I'm_ responsible, but it will be Farnum and his friends that will bear the blame. There ain't but one flaw in the whole thing: Morse will never know that it's me that killed him."
"You devil!" cried the boy, with impotent passion.
"I've waited ten years for this day, and it's come at last. Don't you think for a moment I'm going to weaken. No, sir! You'll sit there with my gun poked in your face just as you've sat for six hours. It's my say-so to-day, sir," Boone retorted, malevolence riding triumph in his voice.
Melissy's first impulse was to confront the man, her next to slip away without being discovered and then give the alarm.
"Yes, sir," continued the cowpuncher; "I scored on Mr. Morse two or three nights ago, when I played hell with one of his sheep camps, and to-day I finish up with him. His sheep have been watched for weeks, and at the first move it's all up with him and them. Farnum's vaqueros will pay my debt in full. Just as soon as I'm right sure of it I'll be jogging along to Dead Man's Cache, and you can go order the coffin for your boss."
The venom of the man was something to wonder at. It filled the listening girl with sick apprehension. She had not known that such hatred could live in the world.
Quietly she led her pony back, mounted, and made a wide detour until she struck the trail above. Already she could hear the distant bleat of sheep which told her that the herd was entering the pass. Recklessly she urged her pony forward, galloping into the saddle between the peaks without regard to the roughness of the boulder-strewn path. A voice from above hailed her with a startled shout as she flew past. Again, a shot rang out, the bullet whistling close to her ear. But nothing could stop her till she reached the man she meant to save.
And so it happened that Richard Bellamy, walking at the head of his herd, saw a horse gallop wildly round a bend almost into his bleating flock. The rider dragged the bronco to a halt and slipped to the ground. She stood there ashen-hued, clinging to the saddle-horn and swaying slightly.
"I'm in time.... Thank God!... Thank God!" her parched lips murmured.
"Miss Lee! You here?" he cried.
They looked at each other, the man and the girl, while the wild fear in her heart began to still. The dust of the drive was thick on his boots, his clothes, his face, but the soil of travel could not obscure the power of his carriage, the strong lines of his shoulders, the set of his broad, flat back, any more than it could tarnish her rarity, the sweetness of blood in her that under his gaze beat faintly into her dusky cheeks. The still force of him somehow carried reassurance to her. Such virility of manhood could not be marked for extinction.
She panted out her story, and his eyes never left her.
"You have risked your life to save mine and my herders," he said very quietly.
"You must go back," she replied irrelevantly.
"I can't. The entrance is guarded."
This startled her. "Then--what shall we do?"
"You must ride forward at once. Tell the vaqueros that I am moving my sheep only to take them to the railroad. Explain to them how Alan is detained with the message I sent Farnum. In a few minutes we shall follow with the sheep."
"And if they don't believe that you are going out of the sheep business--what then?"
"I shall have to take my chance of that."
She seemed about to speak, but changed her mind, nodded, swung to the saddle, and rode forward. After a few minutes Bellamy followed slowly. He was unarmed, not having doubted that his letter to the cattleman would make his journey safe. That he should have waited for an answer was now plain, but the contract called for an immediate delivery of the sheep, as he had carefully explained in his note to Farnum.
Presently he heard again the clatter of a horse's hoofs in the loose shale and saw Melissy returning.
"Well?" he asked as she drew up.
"I've told them. I think they believe me, but I'm going through the gorge with you."
He looked up quickly to protest, but did not. He knew that her thought was that her presence beside him would protect him from attack. The rough chivalry of Arizona takes its hat off to a woman, and Melissy Lee was a favorite of the whole countryside.
So together they passed into the gulch, Bellamy walking by the side of her horse. Neither of them spoke. At their heels was the soft rustle of many thousands of padding feet.
Once there came to them the sound of cheering, and they looked up to see a group of vaqueros waving their hats and shouting down. Melissy shook her handkerchief and laughed happily at them. It was a day to be remembered by these riders.
They emerged into a roll of hill-tops upon which the setting sun had cast a weird afterglow of radiance in which the whole world burned. The cactus, the stunted shrubbery, the painted rocks, seemed all afire with some magic light that had touched their commonness to a new wonder.
A sound came to them