Trouble Trail — For Two

By Thomas Calvert

 

Lovely Tess knew that big ranches weren’t built on promises and moonlight kisses. She wanted her future safe-guarded against the ravages of wild range life — and she poured her whole heart into that kiss she gave Dusty, a kiss meaning... good-by!

 

BART WILLIS rode into the Goodhue ranch for early Sunday supper, sasheying his new Morgan gelding a little just for show. In that country of rough and rugged brush broncs, its blooded beauty was a thing rarely seen. It would set Bart out as someday a little above the crowd.

The whole family stepped out into the beating golden light to watch Bart put his new possession through its paces. The horse had pride and rhythm and training. Being a full Morgan, nobody could say much more. At the end of his showing, Bart stepped out of the saddle with self complacency. He stood running a big thick hand over the animal’s sleek muscles with a justified air of pride.

He had the kind of low, heavy voice that rolled like organ notes even when he spoke in a whisper. It boomed now as he said in what he meant for a low, casual note, “I ordered this gelding’s sister come next fall. They will make a fine matched pair.”

He lifted his square, florid face and let his bold blue eyes slide across to Tess. She was a girl of strong, dark beauty, with contradictions in her face. She had both the freshness of youth, and the maturity of deep wisdom. There was recklessness in her, and there was keen skepticism, too.

She met his look square on. She met it levelly, and gave a small, cool smile, and then without haste, drew away her gaze.

Her father asked, “Bart, what in pot you figure to do with two blooded hosses out in this scrub country? Only good for ridin’. You can’t risk this kind of horseflesh in tough cow work!”

Bart grinned. He said, “You got the notion yore the only man ever got hitched, T. L.?”

“Well now,” T. L. Goodhue allowed, seeing the light. “There was this difference. In my case I was almighty popular among the womenfolks!”

“There were no other womenfolks in sixty miles!” his wife corrected. “Howbeit, you were too all fired popular with me for my good!” She pinned him with a peremptory eye. “Pa, you come along and get me some wood to finish supper!”

The girl moved beside a corral post as Bart unsaddled. She was tall, with lean lithe lines.

Bart came out of the corral and shut the gate. She felt his big bulk moving up behind her. He was not fat, but he breathed heavily. Everything he did was in a big and heavy way. He said after a space, “Tess, sometimes I have the feeling I’m not wanted.”

“You are wrong, Bart,” she said across her shoulder. There was no apology in her voice. It was a straightforward statement of an honest fact.

He scowled at the nape of her long, smooth neck. Touch her, he did not dare.

He said hesitantly, “I have no right to ask, but it would mean a great deal to me to know. Is it another man?”

For a moment she hesitated, then turned and looked him levelly in the eyes. She put a hand upon his thick upper arm and gave him a friendly squeeze. She lightly told him, “Bart, you’d like to stampede a gal!”

“It is just that?” he asked. “You have not yet made up yore mind?”

“Just that,” she nodded. “There are other men. I think it is an even half dozen cluttering up the landscape. But they are not often asked for supper. You rate high.”

His good self opinion came back onto his face. “Why then,” he said with only a note of wryness, “I will wait. If it is an open field, I will take my chance of winning!”

“Am I worth it?” she wondered.

 

HE CHUCKLED. “I have never yet set my eye upon anything not worth the gamble. And I have never played and lost. You would be a credit to a man, something to which he could point with pride.”

She gave him her ready smile. “There are nice things about you, Bart!”

“I am a good risk,” he agreed. “That is what the bankers call it. I will gamble high, but I will never stake my last dollar. There will always be enough to make a fresh start if I lose the pot.”

He could get a little gusty on that subject. From the purse of his lips, she knew the signs. She headed that off by taking his arm to walk up path. This took them through the sparse cactus and flower garden the hot suns permitted and that took most of the free time in her life. He gestured at it with an arrogant sweep of his hand.

He said, “There’s an example. I will bet you spend three hours a day just watering alone. As my wife, you could have a mestizo to tend yore garden for you!”

She looked up at him with speculation and started to ask a question, then carefully held it in her mind. His efforts in life he devoted to success. He did not waste them upon matters others could do better. He did not even break his own horses.

They had supper and then went and sat on the balcony. The heat of day had passed. Now the evening sky slanted in its warm blue and red and yellow light. The tints caught upon the dark beauty of her face. Her jet hair was sharp against the white bloom of a yucca.

Bart was having his cigar with satisfaction. In that mood of well being, he studied her. He shook his head with conviction. “Yessirree, I will have to wait, but I will get you, Tess! There isn’t a purtier gal around, and Bart Willis will take nothing but the best!”

He removed his cigar to laugh largely at his quip. The girl gave her quiet smile. Maybe he was just more truthful than most. But that was about the way Bart thought. It was not particularly Tess Goodhue he wanted for a wife. It was the prettiest girl around; the one who would do most to flatter his pride.

He had more of his smoke and then asked, “You fixing to ride over to the trained horse contest at Spring, three weeks Satiddy?”

Her eyes came opened wide. “What do you think, Mister? That I’m going to miss the best show of the year? We’ve got box four, right in front!”

“I’m glad of that. You’ll be on hand to watch me win the big prize. There isn’t a horse in this country can outpoint that new Morgan of mine.”

“Why, I wish you luck, Bart,” she said. “But you have got some competition!”

“Scrub ponies,” he scoffed. “Good cattle workers. But no class. I will win every event I enter, saving mebbe the trick horse class. I will give Dusty Murdoch an even chance on that.”

“Why that is right handsome of you, Bart,” Dusty allowed from the far end of the balcony.

The girl swung her gaze in that direction. A faint flush rose up into her cheeks. He stood there long and limber as a bean, his lean face scrubbed almost raw, but even his Sunday pants shiny at the knees.

His wide blue eyes met hers and his broad lips quirked in a homely grin.

He swung his gaze back to Bart. “But I calculate I got an even chance in two more classes.”

Bart carefully knocked the ash from his cigar. He smiled with assured superiority. “Want to make a little bet?”

“Well,” Dusty drawled hesitantly. “Might bet you three longhorn yearlin’s.”

Bart lifted his laugh to shake the rafters. “What’s wrong with fifty dollars gold?”

Dusty moved uncomfortably in his worn boots. He passed it off the best he could. He said ruefully, “Brother, you are talking riddles!”

Ma Goodhue stuck her gray head out the door and commanded, “Dusty, you come help me do some lifting.”

“Why sure, ma,” he agreed. “But this doohicky I brought Tess needs something fast.” He brought his hand from behind his back. In a coffee can he had a small cactus with the most beautiful blue star flowers she had ever seen.

The girl gave a little gasp of pleasure. Bart looked at it with amusement. He himself had brought some real imported French sachet. He was less amused when the girl went off to replant and tend the cactus at that moment. He waited for her return, and spent another fifteen minutes, and then took his leave. One grace she had to acknowledge in him, he never overstayed.

 

SHE walked out to speed him on his way, and then moved lightly back through his eddying dust. Dusty was sitting upon the back of a chair in the kitchen jollying her mother into a good humor with a bit of gossip she had not heard. He glanced around and grinned. “That wizard hoss wrangler done gone?” Tess put her nose up at him, but her eyes were a-twinkle. She felt ten years younger with Bart out of the way. She felt as if she could yell.

Ma Goodhue said sharply, “Don’t get uppity on account of bein’ so pore you have to gentle yore own hosses, Dusty! That Bart Willis is going places, which is more than I can say for some!”

“That is the best news I’ve heard yet,” Dusty said. “Me, I’m stayin’ right here to court yore daughter.” He ducked ma’s dishrag and dragged out a harmonica. In two minutes he had the scowl off her face and had her singing.

Pa Goodhue came in and announced cantankerously, “Dunno but what it would be worth letting you have Tess jist to get you out of here!” His boot began to tap out time. “Let’s have that salivatin’ piece you play about the funeral of Jake Slade.”

It was dark and Dusty had about sung the old folks out when ma produced coffee and pie and then went off to bed. He sat stuffing down pie and watching the girl in the cone of smoky yellow lamplight. Still in his fresh mood he said, “What’s the use of money if you can’t have fun?”

“You can’t have much fun with no money!” she pointed out. Her head was turned along the line of her shoulder. She held her eyes upon the floor. He could not be sure, but he thought he saw a single quiver of her lips.

He said, “Yeah. But I’m gettin’ there too. Only, kind of easy like.”

She turned and looked at him with a mixture of understanding and reproach. She cried with disturbance, “Dusty, why don’t you really work that herd and get a start? You don’t half work it, and you know it.”

“Well, it’s like this,” he said, and scratched his head. His gaze centered on the open door. “You see, there’s always something more important happening. Like right now, there’s that big dusty golden moon bucking over the mesa there.”

She took a long breath of exasperation, and glared at him. But he was grinning in his quiet, shy way. Feelings stirred within her and put a brightness into her eyes. She made a gesture of his hopelessness and they drifted out and walked up onto a bluff.

Dusty’s mesa was a block of dark mystery rising against the gold washed night. The yucca and agave were in bloom. Their smells mixed with the pungent scent of sage and cedar and pine that drifted on the slow warm wind down range. He sprawled beside her bringing forth occasional bursts of music, without beginning and without end. Notes and chords simply expressive of their random happiness.

The night was filled with peace. A faint excitement, and romance drifted on the lazy air. He could feel the heat and nearness and the vibrancy of the girl. She sat in the pool of her wide skirts cutting a silhouette against the moon, and the moon put a mist-blow through her raven hair.

He said abruptly, “Yore mighty purty tonight, Tess. But I sure wish we were sittin’ on our own balcony over on the mesa rim.”

She laid her hand upon his brow. “Have you built it, Dusty?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I got the plans all set.”

She gave his hair a vexed tousle. A little note of exasperation came from her throat. She said with sudden misery, “Yore just no plumb good, Dusty! A woman wouldn’t know where she stood. Even if she went and built yore balcony herself, you’d like to get tired of her and just forget to come home sometime.”

He broke off in the middle of a piece and looked up. “You don’t really think that?”

She shrugged unhappily. “What can a girl think? You been sparkin’ me four years. I’m getting on nineteen, now. That’s darned near an old maid in this country!”

“Is it you or yore folks,” he asked, “that’s down on me?”

She looked sharply away to hide the sudden wash of tears. “They just don’t want to see me starve to death is all!”

She wheeled and bent her head suddenly over his. “I don’t ask a fortune, Dusty! All I want is just to be sure of getting along!”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Only trouble is, for a woman, that takes hard cash!” He was instantly optimistic. “But tell you what. I’ll get down to real hard work tomorrow!”

“You won’t!” she cried bitterly. “You know you won’t!”

“Look,” he said and drew down her head. His arms were strong and his lips tender. The way he made her feel was the thing that hurt her most. Suddenly, she came unleashed and kissed him with a fierce passion such as she had never shown him in her life.

The moon was high overhead when they sat up. He ran his hand back through his unruly mane of hair. He sat with his elbows upon his knees and a kind of incredibly surprised look on his face. After a space he said, “Then it is all set. When will it be?”

She bit her lower lip. She looked at him with the most poignant sadness he had ever seen. Catchily, she told him, “Nothing is set, Dusty!”

“But that kiss —” he muttered.

“That was good-by,” she answered sadly. “You give a woman too much misery. There’s no answer, and there’s an end to what a girl can take!”

“Yore serious!” he gasped.

“Dead serious!” she nodded. “Don’t you come around again until you can bring a ring that ma won’t squint at and test in vinegar!”

He started to speak, then looked at her and grimly closed his mouth. She was right and he knew she was right. What more was there to say?

 

THE trained horse contest was as important as the fall rodeo. The country turned out to see it whooping, and the man who came off tops was king. The Goodhues went over in a dollie shaded buckboard, starting before dawn and stopped at Clear Creek for breakfast.

On trail, Pa Goodhue got the breakfast. Turning bacon, he looked at his daughter across the wisps of bluish smoke. He said, “Tess, there is going to be high feeling over this year’s contest. You see you don’t add to it none.”

A line of puzzlement came between her eyes. “There always is high feeling. Why this year, particularly?”

“I’m just telling you,” he said. He grew very busy with the bacon and biscuits and the coffee.

It did not take long on the street of Spring to find out what her father meant. It was bitterly poor Texas country. What few luxuries there were, the men and women fashioned from the things at hand. In fifty years that range had produced a few great horses, but none of them had been blooded stock. A horse such as Bart Willis’ pure Morgan had a start on the boys before it even entered the show ring.

They met Bart out by the waiting pens at noon. His face was ruddy with excitement, and his eyes were flashing with his blustery pride. He said boastfully, “From the line-up, saving one event, I could win every contest in the show!”

She twirled her parasol and studied him from its shade. Then she turned her gaze away. “Bart,” she murmured. “You’ve got other good horses here. Why not give the boys a break?”

“And scratch my Morgan?” he gaped.

She nodded without looking at his face.

“This means so much to them. It’s the only fun they’ll get for six hard months. Don’t spoil the show!”

He stared at her. He was a little white around the mouth. He said, “Tess, sometimes you are hard to figure out. What is wrong with entering my Morgan? I started with the same things as the other boys. If it meant enough to them, they’d have Morgans too!”

She made an expressive gesture. “Not every man’s luck is cut the same!”

“It was no luck!” he said. There was a flint edge to his tone. “It was the same thing as the reason I am leaving in my Morgan. Because I set out to win and that was the way I played the game!”

For a space she looked across into the dust smoke of the corrals. Then she turned and looked into his eyes. “It is really not a woman’s business,” she admitted.

He scowled, mad at himself, mad that this had come up. He growled. “If it’s going to stand between me and you —”

“No,” she said. “When a woman gets ready to take a man, she takes all the things that go with him, harsh and gentle. You are a hard man, Bart, but this is a hard country. Maybe you are right.”

“You are a sensible woman, Tess,” he told her.

Her eyes went dark with inward feelings. “Don’t ever count on that with a woman, Bart!”

He grinned. “A man can count on that with you!”

Her folks came up and broke the conversation. Friends stopped by, and then through the bustle of people and buggies and horses, she saw Dusty across the way. He had his hat pushed down upon his face so that she could not catch his expression. He was draped on the bars of a waiting pen, smoking, and studying Bart’s gleaming chestnut Morgan. After a space, he came spur dragging by.

He touched his hat, and she thought his face looked pulled and grey. Except for her father, he would have moved along. Spotting him her father yipped, “See here, young fellow, how much damage do you aim to do this here blue-blooded owner in the trick contest today?”

Dusty stopped and darkened and had trouble meeting the old man’s eye. “Why, not much, I reckon,” he said. He considered the dust between his feet. “I’ve done scratched, Pa Goodhue.”

“You’ve what?” the old man hollered.

“Scratched,” Dusty repeated.

The girl sucked in a quick breath and flushed with shame. She heard her father cuss in his throat, and she heard Bart’s grinning snort.

Her father sputtered: “You mean you let this rank furriner hoss scare you out?”

“It is a good horse,” Dusty said. He covertly sought her face. What he saw there put his blush five shades deeper. Her teeth came together with a small sharp sound. She looked at him one blazing instant, then looked away.

He said awkwardly, “Well, you’ll be winning, Bart,” and nodded, and drifted on into the crowd.

Pa Goodhue rumbled, “Can you tie that! Whatever he lacks other ways, I’d have said he had all the grit in Texas! But by gum, he’s done quit cold without a fight!”

“Mebbe he’s not so dumb,” Bart considered largely. “It will save him being bested before the crowd.”

Pa cocked a weathered eye at Bart. “Would you have quit that way in his shoes?”

“I would be sure of having the winning horse to enter,” Bart allowed.

 

BENEATH outward composure, the girl’s thoughts were lost in a black and seething sea. She had known Dusty Murdoch fifteen years. She had seen him bested before, but she had never seen him quit. As they made their way to the stands, she was dimly aware that others felt the same. The news had gotten around, and nobody could quite understand it. The crowd had been counting on Dusty as the one wrangler who might give Bart Willis a run for his money. There was a feeling that he had let the whole country down. The feeling grew. The boys got so mad thinking about it, that they forgot their anger at Bart Willis for entering a thoroughbred horse.

Vaguely, she knew that the contests were being run off, and that each time Bart walked off with first honors, the stands grew madder at Dusty. Between events, men who had been his life-long friends went out to get drunk. Nobody paid very much attention to the fact that Bart Willis won all first prizes. Their spleen had reached a solid surge of concentration upon Dusty Murdoch.

She had supper with her family and Bart, and answered his remarks of lusty self importance, and she went to the dance at the hotel. But none of this seemed real against the completeness of her shock. Her mind was simply unable to grasp the fact that Dusty had run out like that. He might just as well have backed down on a fist fight.

Her mother went home with the Saxes. She went home with her father along past dawn. She sat tense and rigid in the buckseat, her fingers pulling tightly against each other in her lap.

Once she gave a violent shake of her head. “He couldn’t run out!” she murmured passionately. “Not that way! He’s not yellow!”

Her father made growling noises in his throat. An hour later he growled. “Well, he done it, and that’s that! If there was good reason, we’ll never know it now! But it is good for Bart he did. The boys were set to haze Bart bad, ’cept they forgot it in their bile over Dusty’s trick.”

Her eyes came open wide. Suddenly she felt the world as a living place again. Her mind came back to life. She turned and put strong fingers digging into her father’s arm. She uttered, “Pa! Do you think he did it to save Bart?”

He stared at her. For a space, hope flamed up into his eyes. Then he scowled with thought and shook his head. “Not even Dusty’s that loco! And anyhow, there’s no way now to know. He’d never get a chance to prove up that crazy again, so how could you tell?”

“I aim to ride over and ask him flat,” she said. “Even if he lies, I’ll know!”

He spit neatly between the horses and then allowed, “Didn’t you hear? News come in last night of a new silver strike up in the Cristobals. Somebody said Dusty was at the stage office and heard it first, and was the first one to streak out of town.”

The hopeful light dimmed out of the girl’s eyes. Long afterward she murmured listlessly, “Maybe he’ll strike it rich.”

“If he does,” her father commented dryly, “it will be the first thing he ever struck right!”

It was three weeks later that Bart Willis rode over on his fine Morgan. He had supper and a cigar, and then he said weightily, “I have put my affairs in order and I’m off to ride the silver tide.”

Pa chewed on his free cigar and announced, “I been waitin’ for that. You wouldn’t be the first or the last. But you will get in there after others have worn their flesh off proving, and still before they strip the ground!”

Ma sat there with her knitting and without looking up, commented, “You are a smart man, Bart.”

Bart glanced with a shade of uncertainty at Tess. He said, “But mebbe not smart enough.”

Ma looked up sharply, and then thought of things to do inside, and jerked Pa off after her to help. Bart sat forward with his elbows on his knees watching Tess against the creeping dusk. He said finally, “Tess, I am going up there to drop my rope upon a decent stake. I am not after all the money in the world. I will be content to play fast and quit with the first decent pot.”

She wondered what Dusty was doing that minute. He would play for the limit and lose, of course. He always did. Aloud, she said, “You will get your pot, Bart. You never miss.”

He made a gesture. “If I don’t, I have my spread to come back to. But if I do —” He paused and his voice dropped. He said, “Tess, I will go East to find bigger game. But I would like to take you.”

He had never asked her for an answer before. Now he was asking her and she felt the spasmodic throbbing of her heart. She looked off at Dusty’s mesa and watched the last deep reds and purples of sundown splash across its top. Then the mesa was gobbled by the night.

She dropped her head in a single motion. She said low, but determined, of voice, “Bart, when you come back, I will have your answer.”

He stood up and nodded. Relief beat out of him in great waves. “Time enough,” he granted. “I was afraid yore heart had ridden north.” He took the last draw of his cigar and flipped it out into the dust. He said, “I could take a trimming, but I would not like to think of you tied to a man who quit.”

She turned her head and studied him through the murky shadows. Curiously, she asked, “Would anything in the world have made you do what Dusty did, Bart?”

“Nothing,” he answered. “Not if my best friend’s life hung upon it!”

 

HE TOOK a step across the balcony and stood above her. He said, “Tess, I hold nothing personal against Dusty Murdoch. But these are the small signs that paint the picture of a man’s character and life. He may come back rich, and if so, I hope you will remember.”

She murmured, “I’ll remember, Bart,” and came to her feet, and let him take her in his arms. She kissed him, and remained pliant but unfired while the crest of his long-contained feelings burst and subsided. Then patting him upon the shoulder, she sent him off upon his trail. She gave one long sigh and then tenderly put away her poignant memories of Dusty...

Three months later Bart Willis came back driving a four-in-hand and the biggest private coach the valley had ever seen.

“You hit pay dirt right off?” Pa Goodhue asked excitedly over coffee that sundown.

Bart threw back his head and laughed. The light glittered on the diamond horseshoe in his tie. “Let the others dig!” he boomed at that. “There was silver there, T. L., some of that dirt was richer than a silver dollar! But the sure money was in trading. I made my killing and got out. It was an overnight boom, and the fields were already playing out.”

“Purty good killin’, I take it,” Pa remarked.

“Good enough,” Bart winked, “so I will never need another man’s help as long as I live!”

He looked across the table at Tess. His eyes held the lights of a man thoroughly pleased with himself. Suddenly, he held out his hand in a stream of sunset light. “This,” he said, “is an example.”

He opened his hand and a blaze of brilliant light fired up from his palm. Perfect silence held the room, broken by the girl’s gasp. The diamond was bigger than the finger it would be worn upon.

Ma gasped, “Land’s sakes!” And then, “You young folks skedaddle outside if you got things to talk!”

They went out and walked through that pitifully meager garden to the pond, and sat there watching it catch the reflection of the sunset sky. Bart said with a simplicity she would not have expected, “It is yores Tess, if you will take it.”

She sat with her heart thumping like drumbeats in her breast. After a long space she murmured, “I must tell you this, Bart... I haven’t forgotten him as much as I should.”

He gave her shoulder a squeeze of understanding. He said, “If there were a chance for him, I’d say so for yore sake. But he failed, Tess. He failed up there as he has at everything else. He had already sold his saddle and been dead broke ten days before I left.”

She took a long, deep breath. She said quietly, “Tell me, did he accept money? You would offer it, of course.”

“No,” he answered with a perplexed respect. “No, he was running on short rations, if any, but that he did not do. I offered it and he told me where I could go.”

She turned and looked levelly into his eyes. Reaching over, she pressed his hand. She asked in her straightforward way, “Bart, will you keep the ring a month? Just to give him that chance to come back, so that I know for certain?”

He grinned at her with all of his self confidence. “Why, yes,” he nodded. “I am that sure.”

She waited, but she was riding out daily with Bart, and in three weeks she was closing the doors upon the past. The sad and tender feelings were still there for Dusty, but almost buried. Life with Bart would not be tempestuous, but it would not be so bad.

She concluded that on the day when she rode alone into town. She was at the watering trough when she heard the strange cow prod talking with Timmers, the blacksmith. The cow prod said. “This Murdoch was half loco with short rations, and you’d think the first thing he’d head for would be eats. But no, by gum, he took the money for his hoss and went hightailing for the nearest ladies’ shoe store!”

 

SOMETHING stirred within the girl, and burst into brilliant light, and then subsided into black sadness. Jerking her pony’s head, she turned back out the street. Even half starved and burning up with failure, she’d expect him to still be Dusty and half whacky. But why did it have to be another woman?

Bitterly, she rode out through the hills and rode in filled with misery that evening. Her mother met her at the door, with that air of news of which she disapproved. She said finally, “There is a message here from Dusty.”

For an instant, the girl’s whole being froze. Then she steeled herself and went through into the house. It was a package, and opening it, she found a pair of silver slippers.

They were of fine Cordova leather. They must have cost an outrageous price. But more than that, they were a woman’s luxury such as that poor country had never seen. In one shoe was a pencilled note. It read:

 

Tess, like yore ma said, Bart will go places. Good luck. I hope you wear these at yore wedding. Dusty.

 

The girl turned with sudden animation on her mother. “Where is he?”

“I dunno,” Ma Goodhue said. “Strange puncher dropped that here. Said he picked up Dusty footing it down trail from Denver.”

“Footing it?” the girl repeated. That meant he hadn’t even saved enough money to buy a buzzard bait, spavined cayuse! It probably meant he was half dead!

Suddenly, the girl wheeled out the door, and in a moment was thundering out of the yard. Dusty’s shack was six miles across. She reached it just as the sinking sun was turning the mesa into a gold and purple sea.

No solitary sound came from the shack. But looking in, she saw him sprawled out on his bunk. His clothes were in tatters.

The skin hung from the gauntness of his face. The bottoms of his boots were clean out, and his feet were solid welts of blood.

She became conscious that she still held those silver slippers. Now she looked at them, and all the things that they meant held a special meaning. In those slippers Dusty had sent her the last thought and security he had in life. They were not a diamond ring, but they were something more. They were the horse and the food a weary, hungry man had to get back home!

Crossing the room, she stooped and brushed her lips upon his fevered brow. “Dusty,” she whispered into his ear. “You won the contest!”

He stirred in fevered dreaming and mumbled, “No, I was scratched! If they don’t scratch me, the boys will give Bart hell!”

That, then, was the reason he had walked out! To save the man he thought she had chosen embarrassment, and maybe worse. Kneeling by his side she lifted her head and uttered a little prayer. The last light of sundown blazed in the door and shimmered upon the wetness of her eyes.

Four days later she had him able to sit up. They were sitting outside where they could look down upon the whole world. She was saying happily, “We’ll likely starve!”

“Oh, I’ll get out and work that herd,” he said optimistically. “Mebbe I’ll begin tomorrow.”

But a herd took time to build, even when a man worked it, and in the meantime, better luck befell them. A. K. Yokum, the man to whom he had sold his horse in Denver, sent down a message that any man who could train a bush mustang like Dusty’s horse, deserved to handle better stock! He was sending down a cavvy of Morgans for Dusty to breed and train.

“You see?” Dusty told her when the messenger had left. “It all comes of planning it that way!”

“You —!” she said and drew back her hand. But it was hard to whack a man when he was kissing you like that. It was hard to do anything but think of how near to missing this you’d been.

 

THE END