The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine

put in the man who had got off.

      “Get a jump on you, then. Miss Messiter, would you like to look over the place?”

      “Not now. I want to see the men that were hurt. Perhaps I can help them. Once I took a few weeks in nursing.”

      “Bully for you, ma'am,” whooped Mac. “I've a notion those boys are sufferin' for a woman to put the diamond-hitch on them bandages.”

      “Bring that suit-case in,” she commanded Denver, in the gentlest voice he had ever heard, after she had made a hasty inspection of the first wounded man.

      From the suit-case she took a little leather medicine-case, the kind that can be bought already prepared for use. It held among other things a roll of medicated cotton, some antiseptic tablets, and a little steel instrument for probing.

      “Some warm water, please; and have some boiling on the range,” were her next commands.

      Mac flew to execute them.

      It was a pleasure to see her work, so deftly the skillful hands accomplished what her brain told them. In admiring awe the punchers stood awkwardly around while she washed and dressed the hurts. Two of the bullets had gone through the fleshy part of the arm and left clean wounds. In the case of the third man she had to probe for the lead, but fortunately found it with little difficulty. Meanwhile she soothed the victim with gentle womanly sympathy.

      “I know it hurts a good deal. Just a minute and I'll be through.”

      His hands clutched tightly the edges of his bunk. “That's all right, doc. You attend to roping that pill and I'll endure the grief.”

      A long sigh of relief went up from the assembled cowboys when she drew the bullet out.

      The sinewy hands fastened on the wooden bunk relaxed suddenly.

      “'Frisco's daid,” gasped the cook, who bore the title of Wun Hop for no reason except that he was an Irishman in a place formerly held by a Chinese.

      “He has only fainted,” she said quietly, and continued with the antiseptic dressing.

      When it was all over, the big, tanned men gathered at the entrance to the calf corral and expanded in admiration of their new boss.

      “She's a pure for fair. She grades up any old way yuh take her to the best corn-fed article on the market,” pronounced Denver, with enthusiasm.

      “I got to ride the boundary,” sighed Missou. “I kinder hate to go right now.”

      “Here, too,” acquiesced another. “I got a round-up on Wind Creek to cut out them two-year-olds. If 'twas my say-so, I'd order Mac on that job.”

      “Right kind of y'u. Seems to me”—Mac's sarcastic eye trailed around to include all those who had been singing her praises—“the new queen of this hacienda won't have no trouble at all picking a prince consort when she gets round to it. Here's Wun Hop, not what y'u might call anxious, but ce'tainly willing. Then Denver's some in the turtle-dove business, according to that hash-slinger in Cheyenne. Missou might be induced to accept if it was offered him proper; and I allow Jim ain't turned the color of Redtop's hair jest for instance. I don't want to leave out 'Frisco and the other boys carrying Bannister's pills—”

      “Nor McWilliams. I'd admire to include him,” murmured Denver.

      That sunburned, nonchalant youth laughed musically. “Sure thing. I'd hate to be left out. The only difference is—”

      “Well?”

      His roving eye circled blandly round. “I stand about one show in a million. Y'u roughnecks are dead ones already.”

      With which cold comfort he sauntered away to join Miss Messiter and the foreman, who now appeared together at the door of the ranchhouse, prepared to make a tour of the buildings and the immediate corrals.

      “Isn't there a woman on the place?” she was asking Morgan.

      “No'm, there ain't. Henderson's daughter would come and stay with y'u a while I reckon.”

      “Please send for her at once, then, and ask her to come to-day.”

      “All right. I'll send one of the boys right away.”

      “How did y'u leave 'Frisco, ma'am?” asked Mac, by way of including himself easily.

      “He's resting quietly. Unless blood-poisoning sets in they ought all to do well.”

      “It's right lucky for them y'u happened along. This is the hawss corral, ma'am,” explained the young man just as Morgan opened his thin lips to tell her.

      Judd contrived to get rid of him promptly. “Slap on a saddle, Mac, and run up the remuda so Miss Messiter can see the hawsses for herself,” he ordered.

      “Mebbe she'd rather ride down and look at the bunch,” suggested the capable McWilliams.

      As it chanced, she did prefer to ride down the pasture and look over the place from on horseback. She was in love with her ranch already. Its spacious distances, the thousands of cattle and the horses, these picturesque retainers who served her even to the shedding of an enemy's blood; they all struck an answering echo in her gallant young heart that nothing in Kalamazoo had been able to stir. She bubbled over with enthusiasm, the while Morgan covertly sneered and McWilliams warmed to the untamed youth in her.

      “What about this man Bannister?” she flung out suddenly, after they had cantered back to the house when the remuda had been inspected.

      Her abrupt question brought again the short, tense silence she had become used to expect.

      “He runs sheep about twenty or thirty miles southwest of here,” explained McWilliams, in a carefully casual tone.

      “So everybody tells me, but it seems to me he spills a good deal of lead on my men,” she answered impatiently. “What's the trouble?”

      “Last week he crossed the dead-line with a bunch of five thousand sheep.”

      “Who draws this dead-line?”

      “The cattlemen got together and drew it. Your uncle was one of those that marked it off, ma'am.”

      “And Bannister crossed it?”

      “Yes, ma'am. Yesterday 'Frisco come on him and one of his herders with a big bunch of them less than fifteen miles from here. He didn't know it was Bannister, and took a pot-shot at him. 'Course Bannister came back at him, and he got Frisco in the laig.”

      “Didn't know it was Bannister? What difference WOULD that make?” she said impatiently.

      Mac laughed. “What difference would it make, Judd?”

      Morgan scowled, and the young man answered his own question. “We don't any of us go out of our way more'n a mile to cross Bannister's trail,” he drawled.

      “Do you wear this for an ornament? Are you upholstered with hardware to catch the eyes of some girl?” she asked, touching with the end of her whip the revolver in the holster strapped to his chaps.

      His serene, gay smile flashed at her. “Are y'u ordering me to go out and get Ned Bannister's scalp?”

      “No, I am not,” she explained promptly. “What I am trying to discover is why you all seem to be afraid of one man. He is only a man, isn't he?”

      A veil of ice seemed to fall over the boyish face and leave it chiseled marble. His unspeaking eyes rested on the swarthy foreman as he answered:

      “I don't know what he is, ma'am. He may be one man, or he may be a hundred. What's more, I ain't particularly suffering to find out. Fact is, I haven't lost any Bannisters.”

      The girl became aware that her foreman was looking at her with a wary silent vigilance sinister in its intensity.

      “In short, you're like the rest of the people in this section. You're afraid.”

      “Now