Saddle and Ride: Western Classics - Boxed Set. Ernest Haycox

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 you learn that much about ladies?" she demanded. All her questions were thus—sharp and short, striking fair at their target.

      "History," said Tom. "Ancient history."

      That time she paid no attention to the meaning of his words, but instead listened to the sound of them. Her head dropped a trifle, her eyes swept the prairie in one broad inspection, and she did something then she had never yet been guilty of. She showed her skill to please a man—to impress him. Her pony, under the reins' touch, sprang off, running a circle around the stationary Tom. Twenty yards away a crimson flower stood above the buffalo grass, nodding on its tall stem. Lorena threw her compact little body completely out of the saddle, plucked the flower as she swept by and came upright. When she had completed the circle and was back beside the man that flower was imbedded in her hair, a trace of that femininity of which she had never heretofore given thought.

      She believed she had never seen so sharp a glance, so penetrating a glance from any human being. And of a sudden she was afraid, both of him and of herself. The pony whirled and broke away. A few yards distant she brought up. Laughter bubbled brimful in her eyes, her cheeks were deep pink, and her nether lip, imprisoned between her teeth, was like a cherry. The exuberant, vivid current of life would not be concealed under the drab clothing, nor behind the poker expression she liked to maintain.

      "Maybe I'll see you up North," said she.

      "If I should meet the posse," he called back, "I'll tell 'em I only saw a fellow by the name of Smith—and that Smith was heading south."

      She flung up a hand, tarried only to see him return the signal, and galloped over the ridge. The day was hot and still. She thought she had never seen it so beautiful. The rolling prairie, marching its countless miles into the blue strip of haze, surrounded her with the rising incense of things growing. How many centuries had it lain so, how many living creatures had passed across its fecund, smiling expanse? Feeling its warmth as she felt it, heady with bursting instincts as herself?

      The Diamond W was twenty minutes west. When the long dusty lane of cattle came into view, a dun ribbon against the green carpet, she had overridden her gaiety. She was bitter with herself. "Why did I make a fool display? He'll think I wanted him to notice me! Oh, darn!"

      Her father called, but she shook her head and passed to the left flank. For the rest of that day she rode with her eyes ahead, her lips pressed together; by turns pensive and turbulent.

      One thing stuck to her mind, its meaning enlarging with each dusty mile. "A lady is square—a lady is honest. Mister Jefferson Davis, is that all it needs to make a lady? Oh, I don't believe it is that simple. Still, he's been East. He ought to know. Darn it, Mister Jefferson Davis, sometimes it would be a great help if I knew how to cry a little! No, that's awfully foolish."

      The red flower in her hair bobbed with the pace of the pony, a vivid signal.

      IV. SAN SABA STRIKES

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      Firelight threw its orange arc against the night's steel-black pall. Dark banners whipped across the silvered half-moon. The stars were shrouded, the ceiling of heaven had dropped earthward, and thus imprisoned the gaining wind swept over the earth with a hollow, droning reverberation. At sunset it had been both clear and warm. Now a raw dampness touched men and beasts. Sand sprayed across the prairie, a stem of sage sailed into the light and dropped by Quagmire's crossed boots. Eerie voices beat through space—like that of a rifle shot. The canvas on the chuck wagon slatted against its ribs. One solitary drop of rain fell hissing into the coals.

      Quagmire turned his wizened face and nosed the air. "Trouble comin' hell bent out o' the east. Why has they got to be an east, anyhow? Ain't south an' west ample? I think I'll tie my ears down afo' they float away."

      A rider cruised around the near side of the herd, and the echo of his improvised song reached the fire. "Lie down, you brutes, lie down. Oh, a Texas gal is the gal for me—Lie down, you measly, locoed receptacles o' sin. The wind is risin' an' so are the dogies' tails—lie doooowwn."

      "It takes a good bass voice to soothe 'em," opined Quagmire sagely.

      "If this keeps up," murmured his near neighbor, "yo'll be singin' soprano outen the corner o' yo' mouth befo' mo'nin'."

      Quagmire crushed this innuendo impressively. "Billy, yo' ort to know I nev' sing soprano lessen I'm vaccinated to the eyebrows with that filthy mescal." A burst of rain struck the fire, frying in the flames. Quagmire reached