the Drift Fence (1992) (12 page)

She had a small, oval, almost dusky face. Her hands were small and brown, yet they struck him as strong and capable. She was Western, of course. but she was a little lady of quality. He kept talking, scarcely with any idea of what he was saying. And that suddenly betrayed to him a swift and remarkable interest in her. After that he knew what he was saying to her, and every word added to a realization of charm. By the time he had found out she did not have a best fellow he seemed far on a strange new adventure; and when he rode away toward the stands, with her shy half-promise of a dance that night, he changed his mind about his mission to Flagerstown. "I'd get up an' fight some more!" She had looked it, too.

What a sweet and fiery little girl! Evidently she had taken it for granted that he had been knocked down. Well, he had been. But he had gotten up. And he would act precisely and indomitably upon her advice.

Fight! He would whip each and every one of that Diamond outfit.

He gave his horse to a boy at the stalls, and went round to the stand, where he soon found his uncle and was welcomed in a way that made him ashamed. It pleased his uncle that he had come to town in his work clothes.

The rodeo was on. And Jim sat enthralled. "The Diamond bunch will walk away with everythin'," his uncle had averred, but even that startling prophecy had not prepared Jim.

He sat there gripping his seat, yelling when the crowd yelled. And he saw Curly Prentiss ride wild bronchos that threw all the other riders; he saw Hack Jocelyn break the record for roping two-year-olds: he saw Bud Chalfack climb all over a horse, racing at breakneck speed; he saw Jackson Way ride two beautiful horses, standing with one foot on the back of each, and beat his opponents two full lengths; and lastly he saw Lonestar Holliday win the money for the perilous feat of bulldogging steers.

Out of sixteen events the Diamond outfit took nine first prizes. Jim scarcely could contain himself. That was his band of cowboys. He might have hated them before today, but now he loved them. He gathered vaguely that something tremendous had happened to him.

He rode out to the ranch-house in a trance, divided between pride for his cowboys and the momentous dance near at hand. He shaved and washed and changed his clothes, aware of an undue regard for his appearance. His uncle had guests, to whom Jim was presented as the boss of the Diamond.

Jim acquitted himself creditably and kept his miserable secret, strangely growths less miserable.

Then he was off to the dance, eager, with palpitating heart, amused at himself, amazed and glad. He now had opportunity to show some of these Flagerstown girls that if he was a tenderfoot he could interest and perhaps win a prettier girl than any of them. But he had not prepared himself for a vision in white--his girl of the booth--stunningly transformed by a gown, a brown-armed, brown-faced beauty with haunting dark eyes. She saw Jim at once. She bowed. And whatever had not already happened to his heart surely happened then.

Jim did not approach anyone; he saw only her. And he was in a torment waiting for her to give him the opportunity he longed for. If she did not he must go to her, and introducing himself ask for the dance. But she divined his predicament. How the dark eyes met his across the hall, through the whirling throng! Soon she sought a seat with her young partner, and obviously dismissed him. Jim made haste to reach her, to bend over her.

"My dance!" he whispered.

She rose, her face like pearl, her eyes downcast, and gave herself to his embrace.

Chapter
NINE

It was Sunday and Jim had returned to the Diamond camp, a bewildered and chastened young man. Except for Jeff, who was asleep under a tree, the camp was deserted. Jim went again into the deep shade and quiet of the forest. There out of chaos his thoughts got some semblance of control over his emotions and order in themselves.

All the other egregious tenderfoot blunders he had made could not in the aggregate sum up the magnitude of alienating Molly Dunn. He writhed under that. And always he would protest--who could have imagined that sweet, dainty girl sister to a desperado, a gun-thrower, a killer, a rustler of the very brakes it was Jim's task to fence off from the range? Then, just as poignantly he would add--but what difference did it really make who was her brother and why bad he been so asinine as to distress and shame her with the connection?

He found excuse for himself for everything but that. It had struck him almost dumb at first to realize that he had lost his bead and seized her, hugged her atrociously, surely would have devoured her with kisses had she not brought him to his senses with a cutting blow across his mouth.

That act, at once under the astounding dominance of her voluntary kiss--a strange, sweet little touch of cool lips--had lost its heinousness. In the light of the present hour, when it came to him that there had been genuine sincerity, the wild impetus of first love, be realized he had not much to be sorry for there. But she had not known that. How would she ever know? Not that knowing would change her! Her eyes haunted him. What a magnificent blaze! In them had been repeated the fire of Slinger Dunn's.

Why had Molly Dunn kissed him? He recalled her pitiful little confession, and that hurt Jim more than anything else. She was not what he had thought her and she yearned to be. Jim stoutly fought against the fading and receding of something beautiful. The drea, the glory of new, vibrant emotion, had to pale before reality. Yet Jim could not renounce, nor could he resign himself to another bitter blow this West had given him.

It was sudden, complicated and disastrous. But was it irremediable? A grain of comfort lay in the fact that he had time to think, to go over it, to puzzle it out, to find what had actually happened to him, to conceive who and what Molly Dunn was, and understand her reaction to their meeting.

Most vivid of the things he recalled was the bitter reproach in her big eyes. Why had she reproached him? Not because he had unwittingly intimated of a wide class distinction between Jim Traft and Molly Dunn.

She knew she was Molly Dunn of the Cibeque. The reproach had come from a deep and terrible hurt. Jim divined suddenly that maybe she, too, had fallen in love at first sight. The ecstasy of that was short-lived. It could not be true. His own state for weeks had been one of excitement, strain, growing to morbidness. Then a swift change to romance and sentiment had thrown him off his balance. He sank as deep into the depths as he had been lifted to the skies. All of which seemed only to add to the mystery and fascination and fatality of Molly Dunn. He discovered himself vainly trying to do battle against her own estimate of herself.

Just a little backwoods girl to whom a white gown had added charm! But he soon scouted that. Molly Dunn had innate charm.

Through the pine trees he saw some of the cowboys returning from Flagerstown and the considerable distance between them did not drown sounds of their hilarity. Jim plumped down under a pine, overcome by an entirely new and unforeseen probability. Some of the members of the Diamond had been at that dance last night. Beyond the bounds of hope and reason was it that they might not have seen him there with Molly Dunn.

Those hawk-eyed cowboys could see through walls. They had an uncanny genius for finding out everything. But they needed only to know a little to drive Jim to distraction.

He lingered there in the woods, not actually afraid yet, but certainly loath to confront them. Molly Dunn's terse statement that she would get up and fight some more, which he had appropriated as a slogan, in this vacillating hour lost its grip. What a pity if he could not be actuated by that spirit again! Perhaps it would revive, if he got sufficient cue for anger.

Long before the supper hour, which Jeff had early on Sunday, the cowboys rode into camp. So presently Jim felt the imperative necessity of showing himself, because longer absence would only aggravate any suspicions concerning him.

He dragged himself up and to the edge of the forest, only there bracing himself for the ordeal. Somebody saw him coming. Did they pursue their usual demeanour and pay no attention to him? They did not. To his horror they lined up on each side of the camp fire, and faced him like a lot of grim judges. Jim divined that whatever he had dreaded was about to be perpetrated. And some last shred of courage came to his aid as he ran the gauntlet of the merciless Diamond.

"Howdy, boys! Back early, I see." he said cheerfully, if haltingly. "I changed my mind and went in to the rodeo yesterday. You sure gave me the treat of my life, I congratulate the outfit on so many prizes. You can bet I was proud of you."

Not a murmur! He bent over to move a couple of billets on the newly started camp fire, solely to hide his face. Then he sauntered on toward the tree where he kept his pack and bed.

"Wal, boss, we heahed ya walked off with a prize yourself." called Bud Chalfack. "Some little blue-ribbon boy from Mizzourie!"

That sally of Bud's was greeted by uproarious mirth. Like a giant hand it pulled Jim round. His cowboys presented a group of nine young men in varying stages of convulsions. The devil himself emanated from them. Jim choked back a sharp retort. Then Cherry Winters, still quite drunk, staggered over to Jim, his red face a whole grin of impish delight, and he essayed to deliver what must have been intended for an important speech. But its manner of delivery and inchoherence spurred Jim to a blunt "Get out!" and a hard shove. Cherry kept on staggering, this time backward, and he kept on until he met with an obstacle in shape of Jeff's woodpile. He fell on this, toppled it over upon him, and he did not arise. The gang whooped. They had all been drinking, and Bud looked pretty wobbly on his feet.

"Tenderfoot hell!" he bawled. "You got us--skinned to frazzle."

"Thanks, Bud, but I don't quite savvy," returned Jim.

"Boss, I shore--ben savin' somethin' up," raved Bud, beside himself with maudlin emotion. "Th' outfit's all heahed aboot you last night. But I seen you."

"Well, anybody not blind could have done that," snapped Jim, trying to pierce the secret intensity of Bud's rapture.

"But I ben--savin' it up." crowed Bud, slapping his knees with his hands.

"You better keep saving it," warned Jim.

"Aw, boss, I couldn't think of thet. It's too orful good. I gotta tell the Diamond aboot it."

If Jim had any dignity left it was that of the gathering might of fury.

What did the little fool know? Jim resisted a fierce impulse to slap the gaping mouth. The cowboys clamoured to hear. They sensed the long-hoped-for corralling of their tenderfoot foreman. Jim grimly gazed from face to face. Most of them were only in fun, and Bud was drunk.

Curly, too, appeared a little under the influence of the bottle. But Hack Jocelyn was keen, cold, leering. Jim did not miss anything.

"Boss, I seen you on the porch," shouted Bud, triumphantly. Jim gasped at that revelation. Oh, misery! How exceedingly worse than he had dreaded!

"Fellars, I seen our fastidinous boss from Mizzourie." went on Bud, swelling with his denouement. "I seen him huggin' thet little hussy--Molly Dunn!"

Before Jim realized what he was doing he had leaped at Bud, to knock him over the pack-saddles. The blow had been solid, and at least for the moment another of the Diamond was down and out.

Curly Prentiss jumped out from the circle, slamming his sombrero down with a smack.

"You two-faced Mizzourie gent!" he yelled. "Bud's my pard. I'm shore gonna lick you for thet."

"Bah! You bow-legged cowpuncher!" blazed Jim. "If you can't fight any better than you dance--you'll never lick me." That hurt Curly more than the blow to his friend. He threw his scarf one way, his vest another, his gun-belt at Jackson Way, and he almost sprawled on the ground ridding himself of chaps and spurs.

The delay gave Jim time to collect his wits. But even that and some semblance of coolness did not mitigate his welcome of a battle with any or all of this confounded Diamond outfit. The incentive he needed had been miraculously forthcoming.

Curly gave a capital imitation of a bull about to charge, when he was detained by Uphill Frost.

"Hold on a minnit," yelled that individual, impressively. "Don't corral me. I'm gonna pulverize this gurl-huggin' foreman," replied Curly, swinging his arms.

"Shore, an' my money's on you. Curly, old buckaroo," said Frost, holding up a hand stuffed with greenbacks of small denominations.

There was a noisy scramble then among the cowboys to get money up on Curly. But it developed that not a single backer of Jim came forward. If Jim had not been so wretched about Molly and so furious at these pig-headed cowboys he would have howled with mirth.

"Ill take every bet," he declared.

"Whoopee!" yelled somebody, with an eye to fortune. "Give any odds, boss?"

"Two to one," answered Jim. "But hurry. I want to get this over and have my supper."

"Atta boy, Curly!"

"Larrup him unmerciful!"

"You're flghtin' fer the Diamond!"

When Curly came lumbering in Jim stepped aside and hit him in the ribs.

The blow gave forth a hollow sound. Curly whirled around and plunged, swinging. He delivered wide, sweeping blows that, if any of them had connected with Jim, would have fulfilled the hopes of the yelling Diamond. But they expended their strength on the empty air. In a couple of moments Jim became aware that Curly could not hit him. The cowboy was a wonder in a saddle, but on the ground he was lost. He got his feet tangled up and he appeared the farthest remove from nimble. After hitting Curly a few times here and there Jim discovered a vulnerable spot in Curly's big handsome nose. Wherefore Jim began to concentrate on that. He whacked it with his left. Soon the blood began to flow and with it Curly's wild exuberance. But this did not improve his fighting. Then Jim landed his right and that upset Curly. He sat down quite suddenly. This also upset Curly's backers.