SNOW began to fall as night closed in. It came on a rising wind with a freezing, knife-like edge. Had it not been from behind, Reb soon felt he could not have kept the mules going.
The thickening dark was an impenetrable pall. In it the snow was only a muffling gray curtain, shifting, impalpable, yet with a deadly threat. A dozen times in the first ten miles, Reb stopped to test its depth on the ground and to shake free the tarpaulin covering Jube Cameron’s prone form.
“This is goin’ to be bad, Reb,” the latter whispered once. “Mebbe yuh should’ve waited till mornin’. If it gits worse it’ll be the end fer both of us.”
Making sure the other was wrapped securely, Santee spoke only in gruff encouragement. But as he climbed back to the seat and clucked to the mules he realized that Jube had voiced perfectly his own fears. He cared nothing for himself. His own safety appeared an insignificant matter; but how inexcusable to lose Ronda’s father in the storm—perhaps to become directly responsible for his death!
The snow, neither heavy nor wet, nevertheless was piling up. The wagon began to wallow, though the mules still pulled strongly. It was steadily getting colder. Reb had got out of the Basin at last, and the wind keened down Wind River valley as if it were a corridor. Had it not been for that he would have considered turning back while there was time. But it would be useless now. And to pull up behind some protecting barrier would be equally fatal. In his feverish condition Cameron probably could not withstand the cold for another half-dozen hours in any event.
Reb was turning his plight over in his mind with slow persistence, when a pin-point of light to the fore caught his attention. While he did not minimize its significance, he hailed it coolly. His unbreakable luck had not yet let him down. So he was thinking.
Ten minutes later he pulled up beside the black shape of a ranch house. Banging brought a bewhiskered man to the door who directed him in an annoyed tone to come in at once.
“I got a sick man here from the Basin,” Reb told him, shouting to make himself heard. “Reckon you’ll have to take him in till the storm blows out.”
The rancher changed his tune in a hurry. While Reb staggered to the house with Cameron’s bundled frame in his arms, he slipped into a sheepskin coat and volunteered to look after the team.
“Yuh jest made it in time!” he declared when he stamped in again, shaking off the snow. “Man, this is no night to be out. It’s gittin’ wicked.”
Reb was making Cameron comfortable on the floor beside a roaring fire. “It’ll be slower this way-but mebbe just as shore for Cameron, here, if we get storm-bound,” he responded grimly. “He’s got to have a doctor mighty soon.”
Indeed, Jube’s chest was more congested than ever. He coughed and gagged. Fever made his carved face unnaturally red, his eyes dangerously bright.
“Sho’! That’s hell,” exclaimed their benefactor with ready sympathy. “I got a leetle whisky here that may help.”
Reb had brought some himself. It revived Cameron somewhat. But Reb would not leave him untended during the night. For hours the wind howled around the little ranch house. Jube fell into a troubled sleep. The two well men watched over him, talking little. It was the rancher who prowled restlessly about.
“Storm’s over,” he announced, toward morning. “The stars are out. But that wind won’t let up. It’s shore powerful cold out!”
Reb could feel it, no more than a dozen feet away from the fire. Had he not found this haven, he knew Cameron would be dead now, frozen. But if the snow imprisoned them, making it impossible to move the wagon, it could be only a matter of time. Cameron’s condition was even more serious than anyone had supposed.
Dawn found Reb still beside him, sleeplessly vigilant. The man who had taken them in had succumbed to weariness. He dozed in a chair, but roused himself as Reb stirred to build up the fire.
“Wind’s dropped,” was the first thing he said. “It’s still blisterin’ cold. Mebbe the sun’ll fix that.... Glory be!” he ejaculated, from the window. “Will you look at this!”
Santee moved to his side. Beyond the frosted pane they could see that the wind had blown the dry snow heavily. Patches of ground showed almost bare.
“That gives me a slim chance,” Reb said unemotionally. “There’ll be big drifts. I’ll jest have to keep clear of ’em.”
The rancher made coffee, which they drank hot and black. Jube Cameron awoke to sip a little of it. Reb gave him more whisky as well. Soon after, he cared for the mules and got ready to push on.
“Better hold off till it warms up a mite,” the rancher warned.
Reb only shook his head. “Every hour may mean somethin’ to Cameron,” he declared. “I ain’t wastin’ a one.”
There was nothing but the cold to delay him now. The frozen sky, though metallic, was clear. Just as the sun flashed over the white-shrouded heights to the east, the mules hit their collars and Mrs. Farragoh’s wagon, carrying the sick rancher, rolled down the flats bordering the glittering band of Wind River.
It was a hard trip. Opposite Black Mountain Santee was forced to cross the river. One of the mules fell on the ice. It cost a precious half-hour to get him to his feet. They went on, making time on the barren stretches, losing it when Reb was compelled to turn back and go around. His impatience with these delays got him bogged in a snow-choked draw more than once. But unremitting persistence wore away the miles.
When Cameron’s skin turned blue with cold and he began to mutter, Reb abandoned his steady southern drive and struck out for a ranch in a hollow of the hills. More coffee, whisky, and vigorous chafing seemed to revive Jube.
“You’ll have to go easy on them stimulants,” a grave-faced range-boss told Reb. “One o’ these times he won’t come out of it.”
“How far is it to Lander?” Reb countered abruptly.
“Fifteen, eighteen miles,” was the answer.
Reb pushed grimly on. Once again it was late afternoon when Lander hove in sight across the snow. He saw the white plumes of railroad smoke, made out the mottled clutter of buildings, and half-an-hour later rolled into a side street.
His first objective was a doctor’s office. Jube was still breathing, but he seemed in a coma. Reb lost no time getting him into a bed under the physician’s care. Then he hurried out to locate Ronda and her mother.
“Why, Reb!” cried the girl, running to him at once when she saw him walk into the lobby of the hotel. “How in the world did you—What is it?” she broke off, seeing his soberness.
“It’s all right, Ronda. Leastways, I think it is,” he amended with difficulty. “But you’ll have to tell yore mother.” Laboring with his words, he told of her father’s illness and the trip he had undertaken to get him to town.
Tears stood in Ronda’s eyes when he finished. Without hesitation and without artificiality, she kissed his cheek. “Reb, I can’t tell you all that is in my heart. Perhaps that will express a part of it.” Her shining eyes begged him to understand.
Reb’s own heart swelled. His hands trembled. “Gosh, I—” he stumbled about for something to say; “it wasn’t nothin’, Ronda. I mean I ... But yore mother—”
Ronda left immediately to break the news to her.
Stabling the mules and taking a room in a hotel, Reb decided to remain in Lander for the present. A few days would determine Jube Cameron’s condition. That Jube was fighting for his life, he knew. But the next day Ronda told him her father had rallied. There was an even chance that he would pull through. With this, Reb’s tension relaxed.
In the long periods of waiting between reports, he found Lander an excellent place to be in. Friends were not hard to come by. A poker game in a place down by the tracks netted him almost a hundred dollars. It enabled him to slip the curb and enjoy himself unstintedly. Every afternoon he saw Ronda for a few minutes—seldom longer, for she appeared to find many occupations here, to meet many calls on her time. Except for these meetings, Reb had little to do save what he could dig up.
He was seldom at a loss. It was easy to forget other things when he was hitting it up with a few congenial spirits. This had been his first opportunity to kick over the traces in months, and he took full advantage of it. On the third night of his stay he went further than he intended. It began in a dance hall. The girls fluttered about him continually, and he could neither resist them nor take them seriously—but they succeeded in filling him with liquor, after which things took their natural course.
Lander was not unduly moved when Reb filled an old stage coach with tinseled beauties, hitched on a few unbroken broncs, and rumbled hilariously up and down the main street, shooting out lights and rendering realistic wolf-howls at intervals. The populace was amused, to be sure; but it had been amused before, if not in exactly this way. There was no harm done, except possibly to Reb himself.
He was taken down from the box at the end of his wild ride by a marshal tight of lip but with twinkling eye. He had to pay for the lights; and it was strictly his own fault if he had not enough money left to pay his fine. He spent a day in jail and missed his meeting with Ronda. But the news traveled over town, by word of mouth even before the newspaper printed it, so that she knew why he had not appeared.
Err in haste; repent at leisure. Reb repented sincerely, for he knew his escapade had hurt him with Ronda. His crinkly grin had returned when he saw her again, but it was a shamefaced one.
“Reb, I know you won’t do such a thing again,” she told him, genuinely hurt. “You remained away from town too long. I don’t need to be told you’ve earned your fun; but must it be that kind? There’s so much better stuff in you.”
Reb was abject, impatient with himself. But he showed no more of it than he could help. He asked after her father.
“Father’s coming along fine,” Ronda said, her whole manner changing. “All he needed was expert attention. He ought to be around in another week, the doctor says.” She went on to relate how Jube had laughed over Reb’s exploit, which had gotten even to him. “He said he was just such a scapegrace himself when he was young,” she confessed.
Reb accepted the suggestion with a grain of bitterness. Cameron’s willingness to see the humor in the stage coach incident warned him that the rancher had never considered him in the light of a match for his daughter, and was unlikely to do so now.
“Well,” he said slowly, “there ain’t nothin’ to hold me, now he’s nearly on his feet again. I’ll hit back for the Basin.”
He could not leave without receiving Jube’s thanks, and those of his wife. Ronda spent most of his last afternoon in town with him. She was as friendly as she had always been; but something had gone out of Reb. He covered it with jests, and got away at last with real relief, hoping time would allow the girl to forget.
“This is somethin’ new for me,” he mused soberly, heading back for the Basin in the wagon. “It ain’t all fun when yuh got somebody else to consider.” It bad been his first experience of hurting someone beside himself.
By the time he rolled through the Gap late that afternoon, he had regained his good humor. It was March; the storm that accompanied him south had not been repeated. The crew at the winter round-up camp, having recovered, had driven the drifting cattle back to the Basin and were with them now, somewhere up on the bare slopes to the north and west. Reb drove on to Washakie Point.
He reached the store in the evening. Mrs. Farragoh greeted him with real pleasure. There was much to tell her, though he skirted the stage-coach affair by a wide margin. She would not be content with less than a circumstantial account of all that had happened to him during his trip through the storm.
“An’ how’s Ronda?” she asked more than once, when assured that Jube was safely past his crisis. Reb thought she showed more interest in the girl than in Jube.
He had his own questions to ask, and learned that with the fold-up of the winter riding, Billy had got himself a new job. He was working for Doc Lantry. It left Reb speechless for a moment.
“Lantry’s repairin’ his fence; I hear he’s fixin’ to take on some steers this spring,” said Mrs. Farragoh.
It had been planned that Reb should stay the night; but he made his excuses now and, saddling his roan at Mrs. Farragoh’s corral, rode furiously to Ghost Creek.
Doc and Gloomy and Billy were in the dugout. The boy greeted Reb effusively, but Doc was reserved.
“Wal, do yuh figure to stick around a while now?” he demanded, with thin patience.
“Shore,” said Reb easily.
Lantry had little to say, but he remained close at hand. It was not until the next day that Reb found the opportunity he sought for a word with Billy.
“How come yuh landed here?” he queried.
Billy read beyond his lazy inflection. His smile faded. “Why, it will mean a few more dollars toward a year in Lander, where I can study law in Judge Hamer’s office,” he responded. “I thought it would be nice, being near you, too. Don’t you like the idea, Reb?”
Reb didn’t. He was determined that Billy should not make the same mistake he had made. But he said nothing of this to the boy, turning him off with an evasion; nor did he mention the matter to Doc, fully aware of the stand the outlaw would take. Lantry had little real need for Farragoh. He would claim that he was simply following Reb’s example of putting himself solid with the inhabitants of the Basin. What his real object might be was more obscure.
But that Santee continued to think about Billy’s need of money was attested by his abrupt opening a few days later. Doc was away. They were planning the repairs for the creek dam before the break-up in the hills brought the water down.
“How much money do yuh need?” Reb asked.
Farragoh readily discerned the drift of this. “Five hundred dollars,” he replied, making the amount sound like five thousand.
“If yuh get it, I s’pose you’ll leave right away,” Reb went on.
“Sure,” Billy grinned. “But don’t worry. I won’t get it—”
“How’ll it be if I loan yuh the five hundred?” Reb persisted. There was something in his tone the other could not fathom, but he chose to make light of it.
“Get out!” he laughed. “Where’ll you get that much yourself?” It took considerable persuasion on Reb’s part to convince him that the offer was made in good faith. “But how will I ever be able to repay it?” he exclaimed then, in perplexity. “No, Reb; I can’t see it—”
“You’ll pay it back some day. I ain’t got any fears of that.”
So it was finally arranged, not without some hesitations on Billy’s part. Had it not been for his long-standing admiration for Reb, and his faith in the other’s ability to accomplish difficult things with ease—even to the point of finding five hundred dollars to spare at need—he would never have consented at all.
As for Reb, he came out of the exchange with mingled feelings. He had offered to lend Billy the amount without the slightest idea where it was to come from. It was up to him to make good. The money would have to come from somewhere; but where?