Code of the West. Zane Grey

      “Couldn’t think of trustin’ you,” returned Wess, blandly. “Besides, I want to see Angie.”

      “She’s not home, an’ you know it,” rejoined Cal. Then he directed his gaze at Pan Handle Ames. “Reckon you’ve important reasons to show up in Ryson—huh?”

      “Cal, I jest naturally got to go. There’s a lot——”

      “Bah!” interrupted Cal as he rose to his feet, shoving the bench seat backwards. He did not need to hear more subterfuge or question Arizona or Tim. They were too casual, too unnaturally uninterested. He judged the enormity of their machinations by the singular blankness of their faces.

      “Goin’ to ride in on horseback?” concluded Cal, with a last glimpse of hopelessness.

      “Nope. We’re takin’ the big car,” said Wess. “You see, Uncle Henry wants flour, grain, an’ a lot of supplies he ordered an’ needs bad. Oh, we’ll have a load comin’ back.”

      “I wanted the big car,” retorted Cal, hotly. “Didn’t father know I was goin’ to meet a lady?”

      “I reckon he did, for when we told him how bad we needed it to fetch back all the stuff, he said you could drive the Ford,” replied Wess, with a composure that indicated supreme self-control.

      “An’ father’s gone with the buckboard!” ejaculated Cal, almost showing distress.

      “Yes, he’s drivin’ teacher to school, an’ then he’s goin’ to Hiram Bowes’.”

      “Cal, seein’ what a meekanik you air an’ how you can drive, it seems to us heah thet you’ll go along in the Ford like a turkey sailin’ downhill,” said Pan Handle Ames, with astounding kindliness and admiration.

      Just then Tim doubled up and began to cough violently. Plain indeed were his heroic efforts to control mirth. Cal gazed at these four cronies in slow-gathering wrath. Finally he let go.

      “Wess, I’ll bet you a horse to a pouch of tobacco that you’ll get licked for this job.”

      “Say! What job are you ravin’ aboot? An’ who’s gonna lick me? You cain’t, Cousin Cal.”

      “I’m not afraid to tackle it again, an’ if I can’t, by golly! I’ll find some one who can,” retorted Cal, darkly.

      With that he abruptly turned away from his tormentors and strode for the corrals. The profound silence left behind him was further and final proof of a remarkable self-control exercised by these tricksters. It worried Cal, yet at the same time it began to arouse his antagonism. The task imposed upon him by the good school-teacher had assumed more than irksome possibilities. Manifestly it had furnished his cousin and comrade riders an unusual opportunity. But would they do anything really rude or unkind to Miss Stockwell’s sister? Cal could not, even in temper, believe that they would. But they were equal to any stretch of the imagination as far as he was concerned, and they would do anything under the sun to make him miserable.

      He went directly to look over the Ford car. It had seen three or four years more than its best days. But it miraculously held together and really did not look like the junkheap it actually was. That was because Cal’s father had covered it recently with a paint he wanted to get rid of.

      Cal Thurman loved horses, and as a rider he was second only to his famous brother Boyd. But he hated automobiles and simply could not understand what made them run or stop or get out of order. As mathematics had been the only study Miss Stockwell could not make clear to Cal, so the operation of a threshing-machine or automobile or of the age-old steam-engine at the sawmill, was the only thing about the ranch that Cal’s father could not teach him. To be sure, he had tried to learn to drive an automobile, and had succeeded to some extent. But it took a mechanical genius to make this Ford go. This morning, however, the deceitful engine started with a crack and a bang, and, to Cal’s amaze, in a moment was humming like a monster bee. Cal felt elated. He might fool that outfit, after all. Still, he reflected, it might have been within the bounds of possibility for them to fix this Ford to fit in with their scheme. All the same, he decided to take instant advantage of the humor of the car before it changed its mind. Forthwith he left the engine running, saw that there was plenty of gasoline and oil, and then hurried back to the house. Donning his jacket and his big black sombrero, he presented himself in the kitchen for orders from the feminine members of the family. His elder sister, Mary, was not there, but Molly, in her requests, made up for two. Cal’s mother was a slight, tall, gray-haired woman, with a wonderful record of pioneer service and sacrifice written on her worn face. The days of her ruggedness were past. She gave Cal money and instructions, and as he was about to go she called him back.

      “Son, listen,” she said, in lower tone. “Shore them tow-haids air up to some mischief. Now don’t forget your manners, whatever they do. It speaks well for you that you offered to meet teacher’s sister. Carry it through, Cal. In my youth the Thurmans of Texas knew how to be courteous to a guest. We’ve most forgot it heah in this hard Tonto country. Shore I look up to you an’ Molly.”

      “All right, mother, I’ll be good,” replied Cal, with a laugh, and bounded out on the porch and off toward the corral. He wanted to avoid meeting his tormentors again, and was fortunate in this. Upon reaching the Ford, he was relieved and amazed to find the engine still running—not only running, but actually softly humming, with an occasional purr.

      “Say, what’s gotten into this old bugg—wagon?” muttered Cal, as he climbed in. He experienced both an inward quake and a thrill. He was young, and his spirit was such that he rose to an occasion that seemed to him harder than any range task ever given him. Indeed, though he felt this, he had quite forgotten Miss Stockwell’s sister. The issue now was to perform a kindness, a duty to one who had been good to him, a task to please his mother, and to do this in spite of Wess Thurman and Tim Matthews and their allies in deviltry.

      Cal got out of the corral and down on the valley road without being hailed from behind—a fact that he took as a good start to his adventure. Then he forgot the boys and lost himself in attention to the car and the sensation of driving along the shady, beautiful road. For some unknown reason the Ford ran better than it ever had run for Cal. As he hummed along between the green walls of juniper and live-oak trees he gradually forgot his uneasiness.

      The morning was clear, and still cool in the shady road. Blue jays and gray squirrels gave noisy awareness of his approach. White-faced red cattle bearing the noted Four T brand browsed along the way. He came to where the road descended a hill, and entered a rocky gully shaded by sycamore trees. They had just begun to add a gold tinge to the green, and cast a wonderful amber light upon the pools of the brook. A flock of wild turkeys, surprised at their drinking, ran with low startled put—put—put into the brush. By and by Cal passed out of the forest of juniper and oak into the rolling hill-lands of manzanita, through which the road meandered and gradually descended.

      Four or five miles took Cal down out of the foothills into the level brush-covered valley lands that led to Ryson. Here and there, at long intervals, lay the ranch of a cattleman. All the old settlers in this country let their stock range over unfenced government lands. Most of them had homesteaded the one hundred and sixty acres allotted by the government, and whenever Cal rode through this district he was possessed of a stronger desire to settle on a place of his own.

      “I’ll homestead that Bear Flat, if father will let me, this very fall,” he soliloquized. “Wess has his eye on Mesa Hill, an’ I’ll bet he’s just waitin’ to save enough money to marry one of them darn twins—or maybe till he can find out which is Angie an’ which is Aggie!—But girls are the least of my trouble. No marryin’ for me. Give me my horses an’ a dog an’ a gun.”

      So young Thurman drove on along the road, with the dry, warm, fragrant breeze in his face, and his thoughts leisurely following idle, dreamy channels. At length he came out into country flat enough for him to see the blue peaks of the Mazatzal range to the south, and to the north the wonderful Mogollon Rim, a black-and-yellow wandering wall of mountain, horizon-long, and ending in the purple distance of the west. This valley was poor