it was nearly noon the following day when a lone horsewoman rode into the grove of cottonwoods that stood before the ranch house of gustav tanburt. no one came out to meet her. a few chickens moseyed about, commanded by a black rooster with a red muffler about his neck and a redder comb, deeply notched. he gave mary temple a wall-eyed stare. a young calf, tied to a tree on thirty feet of rope, took the occasion to celebrate mary’s advent by racing round in a circle, carrying its tail as if it were broken in the middle, and ending the performance by encircling several trees with the rope and coming to an enforced, bawling standstill.
mary dismounted in a spasm of suffering, watered her horse at a dripping trough adjacent to a flow of artesian water from a rusty pipe, lowered the reins over the horse’s head, and walked to the painfully small and circumspect veranda. she knocked smartly on a weather-stained door, in which a brown-china knob hung like a loose tooth. gus tanburt, for all the riches that had been forced upon him, clave to the familiar relics of his days of haphazard struggling.
mary knocked twice. a large black-green blow fly buzzed about before her peaked nose, seeming to anticipate the opening of the door. mary struck at it[239] viciously, not with the flat of her hand but with her bony fist. mary was in no humour to administer punishment with the flat of her hand. she was in the mood to deliver a haymaker and put her scant weight behind it.
shuffling footsteps preceded the opening of the door, and gus tanburt bleared at her from between wind-stung eyelids.
the eyelids had no lashes, and the skin of the rancher’s face was slick and shiny as an ancient scar. his teeth were few and far between—yellow fangs in his yielding gums. the breath of his brown clay pipe nearly asphyxiated his gentle caller.
he glowered at mary as if she were the tax assessor.
“where’d you come from?” was his inhospitable greeting.
“i’m riding to britton,” answered mary. (shirttail henry had coached her.) “i wanted to know if i couldn’t buy something to eat and a feed for my horse.”
“who are ye?”
“my name is winifred allison.” (mary always wished she had been born winifred allison. most of us have pet names that we wish our parents had had the sense to bestow on us. winifred allison was mary’s.)
“where ye from?”
“fresno.”
“i mean jest now.”
“oh! i’ve been riding through the mountains from glenning.”
[240]“glennin’! that’s a hundred an’ fifty miles t’other side o’ th’ range, woman!”
“i’m not disputing that, man!” mary snapped back. “i’m telling you that i rode from glenning here, on my way to britton. what’s the odds? can you sell me some dinner and a feed of hay for the horse?”
gus tanburt looked over her ridgy shoulder and squinted at her horse. for a few moments mary scarcely breathed. but the watery eyes coasted back to her again, and she knew that the rancher had not recognized the animal as belonging to diamond h.
“i got nothin’ fitten to eat,” he told her. “i’m a sick man, an’ i’m alone and don’t wanta be pestered. ye c’n put th’ brute in th’ corral and pitch ’im a couple forkfuls o’ hay, if ye want to. that’ll be fifty cents. then if ye c’n find anything to eat in th’ kitchen ye’re welcome to he’p yerself. that’ll be a dollar. waterin’ th’ brute is fifty cents, a’g’in. two dollars in all. strike ye right?”
“oh, yes,” muttered mary. “quite reasonable—especially the water, which is going to waste a barrelful every five minutes.”
“well, this here’s a desert country, ma’am, an’ us folks that put up with stayin’ ’way out here gotta make a livin’. ye c’n take it or leave it. funny, though, a woman like you all alone forkin’ a hoss from glennin’ to britton. if it’s any o’ my business—”
“it isn’t,” mary broke in. “where shall i put my horse?”
he shuffled out and to the corner of the house, where he pointed a crooked finger toward one of the large[241] stables, about which was a tumble-down board corral.
“put ’im in that corral,” he said. “that’s th’ hoss corral. keep away from t’other’n, though. it runs ’way back in th’ cottonwoods, to where ye can’t see, an’ i got a bad bull in there. he killed a cholo last summer.”
“all right,” said mary. “i’ll not go near him.”
she went to her horse, and, afraid to mount because she would display her awkwardness and probably be forced to explain about the broken rib, led the animal past the rancher toward the corral he had indicated. he stood at the corner of the house and watched her until she had taken down the bars and turned in the horse; but mary had detected no suspicion in his eyes as they roved appraisingly over the animal, as a horseman’s eyes invariably will do. she had walked abreast the horse’s shoulder to hide the diamond h brand. he watched her while she took off the saddle and bridle. but he had disappeared before she came from the stable with the second allotted forkful of fragrant alfalfa hay.
mary carried this forkful to the corner of the stable farthest from the ranch house, as she had the first. casting a quick glance over her shoulder, she stepped past the head of her eagerly eating horse and was hidden from the house by the stable. she whipped off her hat and waved furiously to shirttail henry, hidden somewhere in that part of the cottonwood grove inhabited by the man-killer bull. this bull, mary believed, was a myth; for she and henry had approached the ranch buildings so that this neck of the grove[242] would screen them from the inhabitants. henry had slunk through the grove on reaching it, and she had ridden by to come out on the road that passed through the ranch. she had seen henry’s broad, bewhiskered face peering out at her from a portion of the grove not far from the stables where she had later found hay for her horse. this meant that henry had walked the length of the grove parallel with her course along the road, and he had not looked as if he had seen anything of the alleged destroyer.
when she began waving shirttail henry at once stepped from behind the hole of a large cottonwood and returned the signal. hastily she scribbled a message on a piece of paper and, holding it up for her aide to see, slipped it under a batten on the side of the stable. henry waved his understanding of the pantomime, and mary hurried back in sight of the ranch house and started walking toward it.
she had written:
this old rooster is a crook. he says there is a fierce bull in the grove where you are. he lies. he wanted to keep me away from the other corral and the buildings near it. i’ll keep him busy in the house, while you look into all the buildings and see what you can find out. that bull story convinces me that there’s something wrong. don’t be a blundering idiot, now, and make a splatchet of everything.
five minutes after reading the note shirttail henry was clinging with his knees to a rail which he had[243] leaned against the adobe wall under the ten-inch window of dr. shonto’s prison.
mary temple contrived to spend an hour and a half in the ranch house. she fried fresh eggs for herself and made baking-powder biscuits and a cup of tea. gus tanburt sat in a decrepit kitchen chair and talked with her while she worked, questioning her about anything and everything of which she knew nothing at all. but mary’s was an inventive mind, and she told him about the new schoolhouse at glenning and spoke feelingly of the last rites solemnized over the mortal remains of one dan stebbins, shoemaker, as mythical as tanburt’s bull. didn’t he know dan? that was strange. but, then, of course he didn’t know a great deal about glenning. maybe he knew the morgan girls? no? mabel had married the young baptist minister who had recently come from ohio; and ethel morgan was—well, perhaps the least said about ethel the better. she had bobbed her hair, though, and he could draw his own conclusions.
when the ordeal was over mary laid a couple of dollars on a place in the oilcloth-covered table where the oilcloth had not worn off, and thanked the old profiteer in her sweetest manner. tanburt did not know that mary’s sweetness was inevitably a danger signal, so, refreshed with much fictitious news, he accompanied her to the door in a more agreeable frame of mind and invited her to drop in again if she ever rode through in the future. but he was too miserable to saddle her horse for her, and bade her good-by on the porch.
[244]tucked under the same batten on the east side of the stable mary read, on the reverse side of her note:
doctor is in that little dobe the othir side off the coral. met me a mile down the rode to the west of tanberts. i left this note before i left.
“there,” murmured mary, “is what you call american efficiency, which i always suspected was pretty much hot air. he left the note before he left. henry! henry! if all of our government officials were like you!”
the short winter day was drawing to its close. the sun was sinking slowly behind the coast range, having dropped suddenly from under a rack of clouds for its first smile of the day before seeking its bed in the mystic west.
then two horsemen galloped easily from a short pass through a chain of half-hearted buttes that barely broke the monotony of the level desert on the road from tanburt ranch to britton. the first horse shied and snorted, almost unseating its rider. the second, frightened by the action of the first, reared on its hind legs and wheeled.
an apparition suddenly had confronted the little party. mary temple, gaunt and severe of mien, had appeared uncannily in the middle of the road, with a leveled winchester at her shoulder.
“up!” she commanded acidly, as the horses came to a dancing halt. “quick! climb the ladder, both of you! don’t make a mistake. i’ve killed my man.”
[245]then the hammer clicked icily as she cocked it in the desert stillness.
that was the master stroke of the whole performance—that ominous click that followed her unimpassioned command. it was psychological. leach and morley thrust their hands above their heads and grinned uncomfortably.
“henry! morley has a six-gun on his hip. get it. morley, let him get it. i’m telling you the god’s truth when i say i’ll pull the trigger if you move a hand. damn you, anyway—i’d as soon take a crack at you as break an egg!”
“wh-why, miss temple!” gasped smith morley.
“shocked, eh? well, if you’d seen me when i ran the silver fox dance hall in alaska, ten or eleven years ago, you’d know who you’re dealing with. but if you want to take a chance—henry!”
“yes’m—here i am.”
henry quivered from behind the large greasewood bush that had concealed him, and, grinning apologetically, stepped to the side of morley’s horse and removed a wooden-handled .45 from its holster.
he heaved a sigh of relief as he backed away.
“now,” he said, “try to come any o’ yer capers on me, smith and omar, an’ i’ll get me a club—”
“you’ll do nothing of the sort,” mary cut in crisply. “why not blow their heads off with their own gat?”
“heh-heh-heh!” chuckled henry.
“hit the ground,” mary commanded. “keep your hands up and turn your backs to me.”
leach obeyed instantly, but a look of disdain had[246] come upon morley’s features as, the first shock over, his courage began welling up again.
“you wouldn’t shoot—”
the remainder of his sentence was drowned by the roar of the winchester, and the prospector felt the wind of the bullet as it crashed past his cheek. there followed the instant clacking of the mechanism as mary pumped another cartridge into the chamber. the horses lunged and danced.
“you were saying, mr. morley?” mary prompted sweetly.
but morley was sliding from his plunging horse to the ground, where he carried out to the letter the commands of the erstwhile mistress of the silver fox.
“there’s some of the doctor’s stuff tied behind leach’s saddle,” mary said to henry. “get it.”
henry obeyed.
“tie it behind my saddle,” was the next command.
henry complied.
“now get on morley’s horse,” said mary; and henry mounted.
“take the reins of the other horse and be ready to lead him.”
henry swung morley’s horse to the head of leach’s and took the reins. at the same time mary was mounting her own animal, and she did it quickly, despite the pain that the jerky movement gave her.
“all right,” she said to henry. “lead out at a gallop.”
morley risked a glance over his shoulder. “you’re[247] not going to leave us ’way out here on the desert, miss temple!”
“that’s what you say,” said mary, and with her hat spanked the rump of the horse that henry was to lead to stir him into a gallop from the jump.
a clatter of hoofs up the darkening desert road, and leach and morley were alone with their thoughts.
perhaps fifteen minutes later mary slowed down to a walk, and, racked with pain, sat gasping in her saddle.
“ma’am,” said shirttail henry, whose horse had slowed with his mate, “ye’re a outlandish uncommon woman. i never guessed ye was th’ kind to ever run a dance hall like that silver fox place ye told about back there.”
“no?” gulped mary. “well, i never did—but don’t you suppose i ever read a story in my life? you talk too much. my rib hurts like fury. shut up!”
