The Complete Novels of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

heard stray reports, sometimes she made shrewd guesses and in each instance it left her troubled, uncertain—She was, above all else, loyal to the very core; but even loyalty could not subdue the distrust that occasionally—and more frequently of late—came to her heart. The Diamond W had not prospered these last six years or so. Why this should be she could not tell. All she knew was that the Colonel had grown more nervous, more secretive, and that there was an air about the outfit she liked little enough. San Saba, for example. Her father had kept the man season after season...

      "Trouble is what I guessed," she shot back. "Trouble always comes with San Saba."

      "Seems like you have an undue distrust of him, Lorena. I never had a better foreman."

      "Nor a more crooked one. He's got a bad face. Always made me feel like I was stepping on a snake. A renegade, that fellow. I never was so glad as when he quit. What's he doing now?"

      "Don't know," grunted Colonel Wyatt.

      The girl studied his face for quite a while. In the end she pressed her heels against the pony's flanks and sprang away. Wyatt had sight of open rebellion on her clear features. Nor did she resume her place on the left of the herd, but raced up and over a ridge and vanished from sight.

      "She'll ride it off," murmured Wyatt, trying to convince himself. Yet he was not so sure. Lorena had stubborn blood; she had curiously straightforward ideas that on occasion confounded all his plausible explanations. "She'll ride it off. The girl has got to learn it's a tough world and maybe it takes fire to fight fire. By the stones o' Peter—yes, she will!"

      Lorena's pony, given rein, fled over the rolling ground. The girl swayed in the saddle as if to relieve her muscles, and presently her doubts went away. Up the swelling folds of earth and down the coulee sides, with the sun pouring its heat out of the sky. Cloud castles floated across the blue. Afar she could see the frosted peaks of the Rockies. North, beyond that cloudy strip that was the horizon, lay Dakota. North was adventure—north was another world. Already she felt the difference in climate; the air was lighter, it brought up a sense of utter freedom, it had the power to make her giddy.

      "Well, I wish I were a man. I'd never stop—I never would. Ho—what's over there, Mister Jefferson Davis?"

      The horse, hearing its name, promptly applied weight to its front feet and came to a stop. Lorena was on a hump of land that curved across the prairie like a swell of the ocean. A mile distant horse and rider stood immovable on another rise of ground. Lorena stood in the stirrups, shaded her eyes, and studied this intrusion.

      "Not an Indian. Well, let's go see."

      She proceeded at a sedate pace, noting that the strange rider likewise advanced. A white man, all right; riding erect and free. But not a trapper. Good horse—puncher's clothing—young and no whiskers. Lorena stopped and waited. The newcomer trotted on, wheeled to approach on Lorena's gun side. That was manners. His rope, she saw, had one end tied to the horn, his saddle was double cinch. He had a familiar face, a rather blocky face with big features and wide-spaced eyes set rather far back. Not that the face bore resemblance to any family she knew, but that it was a stamp familiar in the South. And strangely bleached for a Western man. Lorena's curiosity leaped to immense proportions. The stranger stopped ten yards off and raised his right hand.

      "How."

      "Why—you're from Texas!"

      "That's right." Then she saw him bend over the horn, eyes flashing surprise. "By George, a woman." And his hat came off.

      "Of course," said she. Adding with a trace of wistfulness, "Just so you don't call me a lady it's all right."

      "Ma'm, in Texas—as elsewhere—all women are ladies."

      "Oh, fiddlesticks! You sound like Pop. However did you get so pale?"

      "I've been East awhile."

      "Sho' enough?" inquired Lorena eagerly. "I'd like to see Omaha some day, myself."

      "Well, farther east than that. Say New York—or Boston."

      Quite a long silence. Lorena gravely considered this, her features puckered, owlish. "That's different. Too far east. But I'd like to see Omaha or New Orleans. Where you bound?"

      "North—let's ride that way."

      So they fell in, side by side, and ambled leisurely across the broad prairie. Lorena still was occupied with the remoteness of New York and Boston, turning the matter over and over in her mind, weighing the sound of it, the possible truthfulness of it. The stranger seemed content to keep the silence, riding with his eyes sweeping the distance. Lorena tallied up a mark in favour of this silence. She had known Easterners, and they talked a heap too much. Piece by piece she checked his rig. Well, he was from Texas, no doubt. And maybe he was telling the truth about having been to New York, though she allowed herself a small reservation. There was many a grave-faced liar out of Texas. Suddenly she thrust a question at him.

      "What kind of saddles do they use back there?"

      "Mighty flat things with no horn and stirrups, something like a chicken's wishbone."

      She nodded. "I've heard of 'em. Guess you've been there all right."

      He smiled, and Lorena marvelled at the change it made. The difference between daylight and darkness. "No law against the truth west of the Mississippi, ma'm."

      Her small, rounding shoulders lifted. "I was brought up on Texas lies. Some of the men in our outfit do it smooth enough to believe themselves."

      He seemed to find fresh interest in her. "What is your name?"

      "Lorena."

      "Lorena—what?"

      And she, who had always been a candid, out-and-out girl, striving for masculine directness, suddenly discovered a contradiction in her heart. The first impulse was to satisfy his question. The second—and it puzzled her why she should feel so strangely about such a simple matter was to make him guess a little.

      "Lorena's enough."

      He shook his head, thoughtful. "Now, you don't look like a fugitive from justice with a past to conceal. I tell you—we'll say the last name is Smith. If anybody should ask me about a girl with a different name I wouldn't be lying when I said I didn't know her. Lorena Smith. Why, it's a pretty combination."

      She rode in stiff, dignified silence. Nor did she unbend until he went back to the original subject. "Whoever told you not to be a lady? Or that you weren't a lady?"

      "Hmf. What is your name?"

      "Tom Gillette."

      "Wait," she commanded, halting her pony. "That's familiar."

      "Menard County."

      "Knew I'd heard of it. As to being a lady—what is your idea of a lady, anyhow?"

      This seemed to strike him unaccountably hard. Her watchful eyes saw him turn sombre; there was a metallic ring in his words, a vibration that did queer things to her pulse.

      "A lady? One square enough not to trade on her privileges—one straight enough not to disobey her mind—or her heart."

      It seemed oddly at variance with all her own notions, and she said as much. "And she must sit straight in a chair, keep her hands white, and lie politely to all menfolks to keep 'em in good humour. Haven't I seen many a lady?"

      "Unessentials," murmured Tom.

      "Maybe—maybe not. Anyhow, I can't do those things."

      "What can you do?"

      "I can do a man's work without complaining, rain or sun. I can shoot. I can rope anything with four feet."

      Once more that warming, transforming smile. It reminded Lorena of raising the curtains of a dark house and letting the sun stream in. Tom scanned the prairie. "We might locate an elephant and try out that ropin' proposition."

      His definition she turned over and over, examining its various facets, testing it with preliminary acids of experience. "Where did