the Drift Fence (1992) (16 page)

He let her slide till her feet touched the ground, but did not at once release her. Molly burned with more than shame. She could have killed him if she had not been so scared. All cowboys were violent and rude at times, but this one was a man with a cruel hand as masterful and relentless as if she were a horse. She must use a woman's wit or she might have infinitely more to regret. The place was secluded, lonely, so far from any cabin that screams would be useless.

"I reckon you'd better," he said, giving her a shake. "Molly Dunn, you made up to me when I met you. An' now you're re goin' to pay fer it. I'm through with the Diamond an' I'm throwin' with the Cibeque. If you fell sweet fer Jim Traft, like them in eyed Flag girls, you can jest forget it. 'Cause I'm crazy in love with you an' I'm goin' to have you. An' you'll marry me as soon as I make the stake we--I'm figgerin' on."

"Marry you!--Mister Jocelyn, you're shore takin' a lot on your haid," said Molly, aghast and astounded at his effrontery. "I'm thankin' you because a man cain't do any more than ask that of a girl, but I must say no."

"An' why must you?" he queried.

"I don't love you."

"Wal, if I know gurls, you'll change your tune soon as I make my stake."

"Stake. What you mean?"

"Never you mind now. I want to talk to you aboot your brother. Accordin' to the Haverlys he ain't got any use fer me. No reason except I was on the Diamond an' thet I'm supposed to have been driftin' round heah on your trail. An' thet ain't no lie! Wal, you're goin to set me straight with Slinger."

"Oh, I am!" quoth Molly. Her fear held her in abeyance, but she could not wholly suppress her leaping spirit. "If I know Arch Dunn that little job wouldn't be easy."

"We--I--I've figgered it out," declared Jocelyn. "It's been goin' the rounds thet Jim Traft made a show of you at the dance. An' it's see it gets to Slinger's ears pronto. Wal, you're goin' to admit it's true, an' tell him I quit the Diamond because of it. Savvy, sweetheart?"

"I savvy that you are a deep an' cunnin' hombre, Mister Jocelyn," replied Molly, sarcastically. Not to have saved her another of his onslaughts could she have restrained from that retort. But Jocelyn's instant grin proved that he took it for a compliment.

"You can jest bet your sweet life I am... An' now soon as you swear you'll tell this to Slinger--an', wal, give me a kiss--you can run home to your mom."

Molly could not look back on any experience with men like Jocelyn. He lacked something most cowboys had. But she divined that with whatever sort of girls he had consorted he had won them to his will. It seemed rather a force of character than conceit. Where Molly had disliked him, had been vaguely repelled, now she thoroughly hated and feared him.

"I won't kiss you, but--I'll think aboot tellin' that to Arch," she replied, playing for time, to propitiate him enough to let her escape from a predicament she would never let herself in for again.

"I cain't let you go on thet, Molly," he said, cheerfully. The idiot actually felt sure of her. And he began to roll a cigarette, a shadow of a smile on his dark smooth face.

Molly averted her eyes, lest he read in hers the thought that she was forming. Once out of reach of his long arm she could get away. The cowboy did not live who could catch her on foot. Molly calculated distance and moment, while concentrating all her energy. Suddenly like a flash she ducked and bounded at once, under the brush into the trail. Joceyn shouted and crashed through. But Molly darted away. She could run like a deer. Her moccasined feet pattered on the hard trail. He thudded heavily after her, soon losing ground. Molly looked over her shoulder to see that he might as well have been roped, for all the hope he had of catching her.

She screeched a laugh back at him and sped on out of his sight, never slacking her swift pace until she reached the place she had cut across to avoid the riders. Once in the clearing, she went slowly so as to regain her breath.

The fool! The hard-lipped cowpuncher--to think he could bully her into knuckling to him! But otherwise she welcomed the encounter. Hack Jocelyn had quit the Diamond. It was a stunning fact against all precedent. He was making up to the Cibeque, and especially to Arch Dunn. Some deviltry afoot! Molly divined that she was not the whole contention. She recalled Jocelyn's looks and words--his actions. How grimly satisfied with himself! He had built some big cowboy trick. What a clever ruse to win Slinger Dunn's friendship! If anything could have placated the lone timber wolf of the Cibeque, that crafty lie might.

Molly sat down on a log to rest. And the gist of this complex situation burst upon her in realization of menace to Jim Traft. That agitated Molly even more than if attack on her. Hackmore Jocelyn would kill Jim, and f he did not Slinger Dunn or the Haverlys would. Molly divined it, shocked that it had not dawned upon her before, and her warm pulsing blood turned to ice. Jocelyn had proved traitor to the Diamond. For that he would be welcomed by the Cibeque, though she doubted Arch's complaisance. An infernal scheme had been hatched and Hack Jocelyn was the prime mover in it. And what did he mean by a stake? Molly understood the word to imply what riders called food or money that they hoped to get by some lucky or clever break. Jocelyn had certainly meant the latter and no small amount.

Molly racked her brains for a solution, which was not forthcoming. Then her mother, espying her on the log, called, loudly. Molly hurried to the cabin.

"I declare, but you take long to do anythin'," said Mrs. Dunn, harshly.

"Well, so would anyone if she got waylaid by a bully of a cowpuncher," retorted Molly.

"Who?" demanded the mother, with a keen look at Molly's heated face.

Instead of answering Molly ran like a squirrel up the ladder to the loft that opened over the porch. It had two compartments, one over each cabin.

That over the kitchen was a storeroom, and the other, over the living-room, was Molly's. It had a window at the far end, a rude contraption that had been put in by Arch. The V-shaped roof was high enough only in the middle for Molly to stand erect. Since Molly had been a child this had been the only room she had ever had, but she preferred it to the living-room, where her parents slept and quarrelled. Arch Dunn used to sleep on the porch below, and then Molly had felt safe, but for years now, most of the nights, only the pines and spruces had sheltered him. What furniture there was in Molly's boudoir was home-made, and some of it by her own hands. Yet until Mrs. See had taken her to Flagerstown she had been contented in this loft. But then she had been a good many things before that lamentable visit.

At any rate, Molly kept her cubbyhole, as she called it, clean and neat, and fragrant with the scent of pine and spruce boughs, upon which she spread her blankets. She lay down there now and tried to puzzle a way through the maze of circumstances which seemed to have involved her.

Following her mother's call to supper, Molly heard Arch's slow, clinking footfall. When he wore moccasins he could not be heard at all.

"Where's Molly?" he asked.

"I don't know. She got huffy because I asked her a question an' flounced out somewhere," replied the mother.

"Some of your questions are shore irritatin'," said Arch. "What was thet particular one?"

"She came home red in the face and panting, and when I told her it had taken her a long time to go to the store, she said she'd been waylaid by a bully of a cowpuncher. Then I asked her 'who?'"

"Ahuh. I reckon the gurl's gettin' too big an' pretty to be alone on the trails," returned the son, ponderingly.

"Big! She's only a mite, an' not so awful pretty."

"Molly is no kid any more. You can bet I'm findin' thet out. An' as fer bein' pretty--where's your eyes, ma? I heah she beat them Flag gurls all hollow at the fair dance. I heah a lot."

"I never hear anything," complained Mrs. Dunn. "I'm stuck in this cabin from sunup till dark. I want to get away before I die on my feet."

Molly had heard such ranting of her mother's for years, but she was stunned to hear Arch reply that maybe soon they would be able to move away from the Cibeque.

"Arch! What've you done now?" queried the mother. "Nothin' jest yet. But I reckon to make a stake soon."

"Humph!--Call the girl to supper."

Arch stepped to the end of the porch and called "Hey, Mol." Molly thought best to answer sleepily: "Yes, Arch. Heah I am. What you want?"

"Supper, you wood-mouse," he replied, and he waited by the ladder to give her a slap and then lift her down.

"No kid no more! Mol, you're as heavy as a sack of beans."

"Shore, an' worth aboot as much," retorted Molly. "You're plumb interested in me lately, Arch."

"Yep, I am, more'n you'd guess," he replied. "You an' me are goin' to have a little confab after supper."

Molly looked straight into his piercing eyes, though she felt her face burn and her nerves quiver. However she did not reply. She carried her father's meal to him and placed the board across the arms of his chair.

"Lass, what's Arch jawin' you aboot?" he asked.

"I haven't any idea, dad. He's got one of his spells."

"There's too much goin' on heah," declared Dunn. "They all think I'm blind, settin' on this porch. But my eyes are good yet for cattle-rustlers."

Molly saw Arch lift his lean head with the action of an eagle, and give his father a dark look. She felt perturbed herself at her father's pointed remark, though now and then he would make some caustic allusion to the movements of cattlemen.

He hated them, and made little distinction between ranchers and rustlers.

His day had been one when sheep held the range. Molly ate her supper in silence, which, in fact, was what they all did.

"Wal, sister, you can have a walk with me," said Arch, dryly, as lie got up from the table.

Molly did not need to look at him again. She knew there was something in the wind, but she felt only halffrightened. Arch was a puzzle lately. She walked beside him as he led her along the edge of the field toward the creek. The heat of the day was gone; the sun had sunk, yet the top of the Diamond blazed gold and red; there were deer in the pasture with the cows; somewhere a burro brayed shrilly. When Arch got to the head of the trail where it led down into the glen toward the spring he halted and said: "Reckon this is far enough. No one can heah you if you do squawk."

"Arch, you're not a bit funny," replied Molly. "An' you cain't make me squawk."

"Who was the bully of a cowboy thet waylaid you?"

"Hackamore Jocelyn."

"I reckoned so. On your way home from the store, I seen you go out the back trail."

"Yes. He must have seen me, too, for he waited along the trail."

"Wal, what'd he do, Mol?" went on Arch.

He was hard to penetrate, yet so far Molly had no great misgivings.

"Arch, I don't have to tell you everythin' or anythin'," she said, steadily.

"Reckon you don't, to be fair aboot it. But you ought to. Poor ole dad is done, an', wal, I reckon ma's no good. I'm no good, either, fer thet matter. But I'm your brother, Molly."

She had never heard him speak like that before.

"Arch, you--you don't trust me," she faltered.

"Hell! It's only the last few days thet I seen you was old enough to mistrust."

"Then--how can I confide in you?" she asked, simply.

"Molly, are you goin' to make me choke thin's out of you?"

"I'm not anxious aboot it."

"Wal, then, are you sweet on this Diamond cowboy?"

"Which one?" rejoined Molly, with a titter.

He laughed, too. "Thet's one on me. But fer the moment I mean this heah Jocelyn."

Molly told him bluntly just what she thought of Jocelyn. "Wal, I'll' be dog-goned. I been given to believe you was sweet on him."

"Who told you, Arch?"

"It come round aboot."

"Somebody lied. I haven't any use for Jocelyn. If you want to know, I'll give you the straight goods aboot him--so far as I am concerned--but, Arch, I'd a good deal rather not tell you."

"Why--if you're willin'?"

"Well, it'll make you mad, an' probably run you into another fight."

"Molly; it's no shore bet thet Jocelyn an' I won't fight, anyhow. Seth has been talkin' too much for Jocelyn. He's too anxious. There's somethin' up. It looks to me like Jocelyn wants to double-cross the Diamond an' somehow throw in with the Cibeque. I'm not shore. But I don't take to the puncher. Mebbe I'm cross-grained. Mebbe it's because he's throwed a gun heah an' there. All the same, if he'd double cross Traft he'd shore do the same by us."

Long before Arch had concluded that speech, Molly had made her decision to be honest--to hold back nothing, though at the suspicion he might presently ask pertinently about Jim Traft her heart came into her throat.

"Arch, you're on the track," she replied, swiftly. "Jocelyn has quit the Diamond. Had a fight with--Jim Traft, he said, an' jumped at a chance to quit. He had a black eve, a cut lip, an' some other fist marks. An' an'--" Here Molly paused to relieve the oppression in her breast, and failed to do it. "Jocelyn tried to bully me into lyin' to you. Wanted me to tell you he'd quit the Diamond because--because Jim Traft had insulted me. Then he could throw a gun on Traft!"