A horse cantered across the plaza toward the store. Bellamy turned quickly to go.
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” the girl called after him in a low voice.
Norris swung from the saddle. “Who’s our hurried friend?” he asked carelessly.
“Oh, a new rider of ours. Name of Morse.” She changed the subject. “Are you—do you think you know who the rustler is?”
His cold, black eyes rested in hers. She read in 58 them something cruel and sinister. It was as if he were walking over the grave of an enemy.
“I’m gathering evidence, a little at a time.”
“Do I know him?”
“Maybe you do.”
“Tell me.”
He shook his head. “Wait till I’ve got him cinched.”
“You told father,” she accused.
He laughed in a hard, mirthless fashion. “That cured me. The Lee family is from Missouri. When I talk next time I’ll have the goods to show.”
“I know who you mean. You’re making a mistake.” Her voice seemed to plead with him.
“Not on your life, I ain’t. But we’ll talk about that when the subject is riper. There will be a showdown some day, and don’t you forget it. Well, Charley is calling me. So long, Miss Three-Quarters-Past-Seventeen.” He went jingling down the steps and swung to the saddle. “I’ll not forget the ad, and when I find the right man I’ll ce’tainly rope and bring him to you.”
“The rustler?” she asked innocently.
“No, not the rustler, the gent between eighteen and forty-eight, object matrimony.”
“I don’t want to trouble you,” she flung at him with her gay smile.
“No trouble at all. Fact is, I’ve got him in mind already,” he assured her promptly. 59
“Oh!” A pulse of excitement was beating in her throat.
“You don’t ask me who he is,” suggested Norris boldly, crouched in the saddle with his weight on the far stirrup.
She had brought it upon herself, but now she dodged the issue. “ ’Most anyone will do, and me going on eighteen.”
“You’re wrong, girl. Only one out of a thousand will do for your master.”
“Master, indeed! If he comes to the Bar Double G he’ll find he is at the wrong address. None wanted, thank you.”
“Most folks don’t want what’s best for them, I allow. But if they have luck it sometimes comes to them.”
“Luck!” she echoed, her chin in the air.
“You heard me right. What you need is a man that ain’t afraid of you, one to ride close herd on you so as to head off them stampede notions of yours. Now this lad is the very one. He is a black-haired guy, and when he says a thing——”
Involuntarily she glanced at his sleek black head. Melissy felt a sudden clamor of the blood, a pounding of the pulses.
“—he most generally means it. I’ve wrangled around a heap with him and there’s no manner of doubt he’s up to specifications. In appearance he looks like me. Point of fact, he’s a dead ringer for me.” 60
She saw her chance and flashed out. “Now you’re flattering him. There can’t be two as—as fascinating as Señor Norris,” she mocked.
His smoldering eyes had the possessive insolence she resented and yet found so stimulating.
“Did I say there were two?” he drawled.
It was his parting shot. With a touch of the spur he was off, leaving her no time for an adequate answer.
There were no elusions and inferences about Philip Norris when he wanted to be direct. He had fairly taken her breath away. Melissy’s instinct told her there was something humiliating about such a wooing. But picturesque and unconventional conduct excuse themselves in a picturesque personality. And this man had that if nothing else.
She told herself she was angry at him, that he took liberties far beyond those of any of the other young men. Yet, somehow, she went into the house smiling. A color born of excitement burned beneath her sparkling eyes. She had entered into her heritage of womanhood and the call of sex was summoning her to the adventure that is old as the garden where Eve met Adam.
61
CHAPTER V
THE TENDERFOOT TAKES UP A CLAIM
Mr. Diller, alias Morse, alias Bellamy, did not long remain at the Bar Double G as a rider. It developed that he had money, and, tenderfoot though he was, the man showed a shrewd judgment in his investments. He bought sheep and put them on the government forest reserve, much to the annoyance of the cattlemen of the district.
Morse, as he now called himself, was not the first man who had brought sheep into the border country. Far up in the hills were several camps of them. But hitherto these had been there on sufferance, and it had been understood that they were to be kept far from the cattle range. The extension of the government reserves changed the equation. A good slice of the range was cut off and thrown open to sheep. When Morse leased this and put five thousand bleaters upon the feeding ground the sentiment against him grew very bitter.
Lee had been spokesman of a committee appointed to remonstrate with him. Morse had met them 62 pleasantly but firmly. This part of the reserve had been set aside for sheep. If it were not leased by him it would be by somebody else. Therefore, he declined to withdraw his flocks. Champ lost his temper and swore that he for one would never submit to yield the range. Sharp bitter words were passed. Next week masked men drove a small flock belonging to Morse over a precipice.
The tenderfoot retaliated by jumping a mining claim staked out by Lee upon which the assessment work had not been kept up. The cattleman contested this in the courts, lost the decision, and promptly appealed. Meanwhile, he countered by leasing from the forest supervisor part of the run previously held by his opponent and putting sheep of his own upon it.
“I reckon I’ll play Mr. Morse’s own game and see how he likes it,” the angry cattleman told his friends.
But the luck was all with Morse. Before he had been working his new claim a month the Monte Cristo (he had changed the name from its original one of Melissy) proved a bonanza. His men ran into a rich streak of dirt that started a stampede for the vicinity.
Champ indulged in choice profanity. From his point of view he had been robbed, and he announced the fact freely to such acquaintances as dropped into the Bar Double G store.
“Dad gum it, I was aimin’ to do that assessment 63 work and couldn’t jest lay my hands on the time. I’d been a millionaire three years and didn’t know it. Then this damned Morse butts in and euchres me out of the claim. Some day him and me’ll have a settlement. If the law don’t right me, I reckon I’m most man enough to ’tend to Mr. Morse.”
It was his daughter who had hitherto succeeded in keeping the peace. When the news of the relocation had reached Lee he had at once started to settle the matter with a Winchester, but Melissy, getting news of his intention, had caught up a horse and ridden bareback after him in time to avert by her entreaties a tragedy. For six months