TROUBLED

WATERS

BY

WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE

AUTHOR OF

BUCKY O’CONNOR, MAN-SIZE,

THE BIG-TOWN ROUND-UP,

GUNSIGHT PASS, Etc.

COPYRIGHT, 1918, 1925, BY WILLIAM

MACLEOD RAINE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE

COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

TROUBLED WATERS

TROUBLED WATERS

CHAPTER I

AMONG THE APPLE BLOSSOMS

THE young man drew up his horse at the side of the dusty road and looked across the barbed-wire fence into the orchard beyond. Far distant against the horizon could be seen the blue mountain range of the Big Horns, sharp-toothed, with fields of snow lying in the gulches. But in the valley basin where he rode an untempered sun, too hot for May, beat upon his brown neck and through the gray flannel shirt stretched taut across his flat back.

The trees were clouds of soft blossoms and the green alfalfa beneath looked delightfully cool. Warm and dry from travel as he was, that shadowy paradise of pink and white bloom and lush deep grass called mightily to him. A reader of character might have guessed that handsome Larry Silcott followed the line of least resistance. If his face betrayed no weakness, certainly it showed self-satisfaction, an assured smug acceptance of the fact that he was popular and knew it. Yet his friends, and he had many of them, would have protested that word smug. He was a good fellow, amiable, friendly, anxious to please. At dance and round-up he always had a smile or a laugh ready.

He caught a glimpse of the weathered roof of the ranch house where the rambling road dipped into a draw. Well, it would wait there for him. There were twenty-four hours in every day and seven days in each week. Time was one thing Larry had plenty of. Why not climb the fence and steal a long luxurious nap in the orchard of the Elkhorn Lodge? He looked at his watch—and ten seconds later was trespassing with long strides through the grass.

Larry was Irish by descent. He was five-and-twenty. He had the digestion of an ostrich. For which good reasons and several others he whistled as his quirt whipped the alfalfa tops from the stems. For the young range rider was in love with life, the mere living. Take last night, now. He had flirted outrageously at the Circle O T Ranch dance with Jack Cole’s girl, though he had known she was expecting to be married before winter. Jack was his friend, and he had annoyed him and made him jealous. Larry had excited Kate with the flattery of a new conquest, and he had made the ranchers and their wives smile tolerantly at the way he had “rushed” her. All of this was grist to his mill. He liked to be envied, to be admired, to be thought irresistible. His vanity accepted it as tribute to his attractiveness. Besides, what harm did it do? Kate and Jack would quarrel and make up. This would be a variation to the monotony of their courtship. He had really done them a kindness, though probably Jack would not recognize it as one.

Flinging himself down beneath a tree, he drew a deep breath of content. Roving eyes swept the open pasture adjoining, the blue sky with its westering sun ready to sink behind a crotch of the hills. His blinking lids closed sleepily, and opened again while he nestled closer to the ground and pillowed a dusky head on an arm. He had slept only two hours the night before.

From the foliage above came a faint rustle followed by what might pass as a discreet little cough. The range rider sat up as though he were hinged at the hips, rose to his feet, and lifted the pinched-in felt hat to a glimpse of blue in the shower of blossoms.

“Where did you come from?” he demanded, face lifted to the foliage.

“From Keokuk, Iowa,” came the prompt answer.

He laughed at this literal response. “I’ll never believe it, ma’am. You’re one of these banshees my mother used to talk about, or else you’re a fairy or one of these here nymphs that dwell in trees.”

Through the blossoms he made out a slim figure of grace, vaguely outlined in the mass of efflorescence.

Her laughter rippled down to him. “Sorry to disappoint you, sir. But I’m a mere woman.”

“I ain’t so sure you won’t open up yore wings an’ fly away,” he protested. “But if you’re givin’ me the straight of it, all I’ve got to say is that I like women. I been waitin’ for one twenty-odd years. Last night I dreamed I was gonna find her before sunset to-day. That’s straight.”

She was seated on a branch, chin tilted in a little cupped fist, one heel caught on the bough below to steady her. With an instinct wholly feminine she dexterously arranged the skirt without being able to conceal some inches of slender limb rising from a well-turned ankle.

“You’ll have to hasten on your way, then. The sun sets in half an hour,” she told him.

His grin was genial, insinuating, an unfriendly critic might have said impudent. “Room for argument, ma’am,” he demurred. “Funny, ain’t it, that of all the millions of apple trees in the world I sat down under this one—an’ while you were in it? Here we are, the man, the tree, an’ the girl, as you might say.”

“Are you listing the items in the order of their importance?” she asked. “And anyhow we won’t be here long, since I am leaving now.”

“Why are you going?” he wanted to know.

“A little matter, a mere trifle. You seem to have forgotten it, but—we haven’t been introduced.”

“Now looky here, ma’am. What’s in a name? Some guys says, ‘Meet Mr. Jones,’ an’ you claim you know me. Not a thing to that. It’s a heap more fun to do our own introducin’. Now ain’t it? Honest Injun! I’m anything you want to call me, an’ you’re Miss-Lady-in-the-Apple-Blossoms. An’ now that’s been fixed, I reckon I’ll take the elevator up.”

The girl’s eyes sparkled. There was something attractive about this young fellow’s impudence that robbed it of offence. Womanlike, her mind ran to evasions. “You can’t come up. You’d shake down all the blossoms.”

“If I shook ’em all down but one I’ll bet the tree would bloom to beat any other in the orchard.”

“If that is meant for a compliment——”

“No, Lady, for the truth.”

He caught the lowest limb and was about to swing himself up. Her sharp “No!” held him an instant while their eyes met. A smile crept into his and gave the face a roguish look, a touch of Pan.

“Will you come down then?”

“At my convenience, sir.”

An upward swing brought him to the fork of the tree. Yet a moment, and he was beside her among the blossoms. Her eyes swept him in one swift glance, curiously, a little shyly.

“With not even a by-your-leave. You are a claim jumper,” she said.

“No, ma’am. I’m locatin’ the one adjoinin’ yores.”

“You may have mine, since I’m vacating it.”

“Now don’t you,” he protested. “Let yoreself go once an’ be natural. Like a human being. Hear that meadow-lark calling to his mate. He’s tellin’ his lady friend how strong he is for her. Why even the irrigation ditch is singin’ a right nice song about what a peach of a day it is.”

The girl’s eyes appraised him without seeming to do so. So far the cow-punchers she had met had been shy and awkward, red-faced and perspiring. But this youth was none of these. The sun and the wind of the Rockies had painted the tan on face and neck and hands, had chiselled tiny humorous wrinkles that radiated from the corners of his eyes. Every inch of the broad-rimmed felt hat, of the fancy silk kerchief, of the decorated chaps, certified him a rider of the range. But where had he picked up that spirited look of gay energy, that whimsical smile which combined deference and audacity?

“He travels fast,” the girl announced to the world at large. “Which reminds me that so must I.”

Larry too made a confidant of his environment. “I wonder how she’ll get past me—unless she really has wings.”

“I’ve heard that all Westerners are gentlemen at heart,” she mused aloud. “Of course he’ll let me past.”

“Now she’s tryin’ to flatter me. Nothin’ doing. We’ll give it out right now that I’m no gentleman,” he replied, impersonally. Then, abandoning his communion with the apple blossoms, he put a question to the young woman who shared the tenancy of the tree with him: “Mind if I smoke?”

“Why should you ask me, since you confess—or do you boast?—that you are no gentleman?”

From the pocket of his shirt he drew tobacco and paper, then rolled a cigarette. “I’m one off an’ on,” he explained. “Whenever it don’t cramp my style, you understand.”

She took advantage of his preoccupation with the “makings,” stepped lightly to a neighbouring branch, swung to a lower one, and dropped easily to earth.

The eyes that looked up at him sparkled triumph. “I wish you luck in your search for that paragon you’re to meet before sunset,” she said.

“I’ll be lucky. Don’t you worry about that,” he boasted coolly. “Only I don’t have to find her now. I’ve found her.”

Then, unexpectedly, they went down into the alfalfa together amid a shower of apple blossoms. For he, swinging from the branch upon which he sat, had dropped, turned his ankle on an outcropping root, and clutched at her as he fell.

The girl merely sat down abruptly, but he plunged cheek first into the soft loam of the plowed orchard. His nose and the side of his face were decorated with débris. Mopping his face with a handkerchief, he succeeded in scattering more widely the soil he had accumulated.

She looked at him, gave a little giggle, suppressed it decorously, then went off into a gale of laughter. He joined her mirth.

“Not that there’s anything really to laugh at,” he presently assured her with dignity.

The young woman made an honest attempt at gravity, but one look at his embellished face set her off again.

“We just sat down,” he explained.

“Yes. On your bubble of romance. It’s gone—punctured——”

“No, no, Miss Lady-in-the-Apple-Blossoms. I’m stickin’ to my story.”

“But it won’t stick to you, as for instance the dirt does that you grubbed into.”

“Sho!” He mopped his face again. “You know blame’ well we’re gonna be friends. Startin’ from right now.”

She started to rise, but he was before her. With both hands he drew her to her feet. She looked at him, warily, with a little alarm, for he had not released her hands.

“If you please,” she suggested, a warning in her voice.

He laughed, triumphantly, and swiftly drew her to him. His lips brushed her hot cheek before she could push him away.

She snatched her hands from him, glared indignantly for an instant at him, then turned on her heel in contemptuous silence.

Smilingly he watched her disappear.

Slowly, jubilation still dancing in his eyes, he waded through the alfalfa to the fence, crept between two strands, and mounted the patient cow pony.

As he rode by the ranch house the girl he had kissed heard an unabashed voice lifted gaily in song. The words drifted to her down the wind.

“Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn,

Best damned cowboy that ever was born.”

It came to her as a boast, almost as a challenge. She recognized the voice, the jaunty impudence of its owner. There was no need to go to the window of her room to make sure of who the singer was. The blood burned in her cheeks. Fire sparked in her eyes. If he ever gave her a chance she would put him in his place, she vowed.

CHAPTER II

TIM FLANDERS OFFERS INFORMATION AND OPINIONS

AFTER dinner at the Elkhorn Lodge Ruth Trovillion left her aunt reading an installment of a magazine serial and drifted across to the large log cabin which was used as a recreation hall by guests of the “dude” ranch. At least she appeared to drift, to hesitate before starting, and after arriving gave an impression of being there tentatively. The thoughts and motives of young women are not always to be read by their manner.

Tim Flanders, owner of the ranch, was sitting on the porch smoking a postprandial pipe, his chair tilted back and his feet propped against one of the posts. At sight of Miss Trovillion, who was a favourite of his, the legs of the chair and his feet came to the floor simultaneously.

“Don’t disturb yourself on my account, Mr. Flanders,” she told him. “I’m not staying.”

“Might as well ’light an’ stay for a while,” he said, and dragged a chair forward.

Ruth stood for a moment, as though uncertain, before she sat down. “Well, I will, thank you, since you’ve taken so much trouble.”

They sat in silence, the girl looking across at the dark blue-black line of mountains which made a jagged outline against a sky not quite so dark. She had not yet lived long enough among the high hills to have got over her wonder at their various aspects under different lights and atmospheres.

“It’s been kinda hot to-day for this time o’ year,” her host said at last by way of a conversational advance.

“Yes,” she agreed. “But it will be June in a few days. Doesn’t it begin to get warmer here then?”

“Not what you’d call real warm, ma’am. We’re a mile high, an’ then some more on top o’ that,” he reminded her.

Presently, the subject of the weather having been exhausted, Flanders offered another gambit.

“I hope, ma’am, you didn’t break any more cowboy hearts to-day.”

She turned eyes of amiable scorn upon him. “Cowboys! Where are they, these cowboys you promised me?”

“They been kinda scarce down this way lately, sure enough,” he admitted. “But you mighta seen one to-day if you’d happen’ to have been lookin’ when he passed. His name is Larry Silcott.”

Tim’s shrewd eyes rested on her. He indulged in mental gossipy instincts, and it happened that he had seen Silcott come out of the orchard only a few moments before Miss Trovillion had arrived at the house, evidently also from the orchard.

Indifferently Miss Trovillion answered, her eyes again on the distant blue-black silhouette. “Is he the one that was claiming so loudly to be the best cowboy in the world?”

“Yes, ma’am. Larry’s liable to claim anything. He’s that-a-way.”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“He’s got his nerve, Larry has.” He chuckled. “Last night, for instance, by what the boys say.”

“Yes?”

“There was a dance at the Circle O T. I reckon Larry was pretty scand’lous the way he shined up to another fellow’s girl.”

“I suppose he’s one of the kind that thinks he’s irresistible,” she said, an edge of contempt in her voice.

“Maybe he has got notions along that line. Probably he’s got some basis for them too. Larry is the sort women like, I judge.”

“What sort is that?” she wanted to know.

“They like a fellow who is gay an’ puts up a good bluff, one who has lots of little laughin’ secrets to whisper to ’em behind his hand when other folks are in the room.”

“You seem to know all about it, Mr. Flanders. Why don’t you write a book about us?”

He refused to be daunted by her sarcasm. “I notice what I notice.”

“And I suppose this Mr. Silcott is really what they call a four-flusher?” she asked.

“Well, no, he ain’t. In his way Larry is a top hand. I ain’t right keen on his way, but that’s a matter of opinion. He’s mighty popular, an’ he delivers the goods. None of the boys can ride a buckin’ bronco with him, onless it’s Rowan McCoy.”

“And who’s he? Another poser?”

Flanders’ answer came instantly and emphatically. “No, ma’am. He’s a genuwine dyed-in-the-wool he-man, Rowan is. If you want to see a real Westerner, one of the best of the breed, why, Rowan McCoy is yore man.”

“Yes—and where is he on exhibit?” she asked lightly.

“He’s a cattleman. Owns the Circle Diamond Ranch—not so gosh awful far from here. I’ll ride over with you some day when I get time.”

Ruth knew he would never find time. Tim was temperamentally indolent. He could work hard when he once got his big body into action. But it took a charge of dynamite to start him. His promises were made in good faith, but he often did not quite get round to fulfilling them. He was always suggesting some place of interest she ought to see and offering to take her there some day. This suited Ruth well enough. She could always organize at any time a party for a day’s horseback trip among the guests of the “dude” ranch.

The girl referred again to her pretended grievance. “You’re a false alarm, Mr. Flanders, and I’m going to sue you for breach of contract. You promised me the second day we were here—you know you did—to round up a likely bunch of cow-punchers for me to study. We dudes don’t come out here just for the scenery, you know. We want all the local colour there is. It’s your business to supply it. I suppose it isn’t reasonable to ask for Indian raids any more, or hold-ups, or anything of that sort. But the least you can do is to supply us a few picturesque cowboys, even if you have to send to the moving-picture people to get them.”

“Say, Miss Trovillion, I’ve been readin’ about these new moving pictures. Last time I was in Denver I went to see one. It’s great. Of course I reckon it’s only a fad, but——”

“You’re dodging the issue, Mr. Flanders. Are you going to make good on those cowboys or aren’t you?”

The owner of the Elkhorn Lodge scratched his gray poll. “Sure I am. Right now most of the boys are busy up in the hills, but they’ll be driftin’ down soon. Say, I’m sure thick-haided. I’d ought to have taken you to that Circle O T dance last night. I expect Mrs. Flanders would have gone if I’d mentioned it. You would have seen plenty of the boys there. But one of these days there will be another dance. And say, ma’am, there’s Round-up Week at Bad Ax pretty soon. They’ll come ridin’ in for a hundred miles for that, every last one of these lads that throw a rope. That’s one real rodeo—ropin’, ridin’, bull-doggin’, pony races, Indian dances, anything you like.”

“Will they let a tenderfoot attend?”

“That’s what it’s for, to grab off the tenderfoot’s dough. But honest, it’s a good show. You’ll like it.”

“I’ll certainly be there, if Aunt is well enough,” Ruth announced with decision.

CHAPTER III

A CHALLENGE

THE road meandered over and through brown Wyoming in the line of least resistance. It would no doubt reach the Fryingpan some time and ultimately Wagon Wheel, but the original surveyors of the trail were leisurely in their habits. They had chewed the bovine cud and circled hills with a saving instinct that wasted no effort. The ranchman of the Hill Creek district had taken the wise hint of their cattle. They, too, were in no haste and preferred to detour rather than climb.

If Rowan McCoy was in any hurry he gave no sign of it. He let his horse fall into a slow walk of its own choice. The problem of an overstocked range was worrying him. Sheep had come bleating across the bad lands to steal the grass from the cattle, regardless of priority of occupancy. It was a question that touched McCoy and his neighbours nearly. They had seen their stock pushed back from one feeding ground after another by herds of woolly invaders. Rowan could name a dozen cattlemen within as many miles who were face to face with ruin. All of them had well-stocked ranches, were heavily in debt, yet stood to make a good thing if they could hold the range even for two years longer. The price of a cattle had begun to go up and was due for a big rise. The point was whether they could hang on long enough to take advantage of this.

With a sweeping curve the road swung to the rim of a saucer-shaped valley and dipped abruptly over the brow—a white ribbon zigzagging across the tender spring green of the mountain park. Bovier’s Camp the place was still called, but the Frenchman who had first set up a cabin here had been dead twenty years. The camp was a trading centre for thirty miles, though there was nothing to it but a blacksmith shop, a doctor’s office with bachelor’s quarters attached, a stage station, a general store and post office, and the houses of the Pin and Feather Ranch. Yet cow-punchers rode a day’s journey to get their “air-tights” and their tobacco here and to lounge away an idle hour in gossip.

A man was swinging from his saddle just as McCoy rode up to the store. He was a big, loose-jointed fellow, hook-nosed, sullen of eye and mouth. His hard gaze met the glance of the cattleman with jeering hostility, but he offered no greeting before he turned away.

Two or three cow-punchers and a ranch owner were in the store. The hook-nosed man exchanged curt nods with them and went directly to the post office cage.

“Any mail for J. C. Tait?” he asked.

The postmistress handed him a letter and two circulars from liquor houses. She was an angular woman, plain, middle-aged, severe of feature.

“How’s Norma?” she asked.

“Nothin’ the matter with her far as I know,” answered Tait sulkily. His manner gave the impression that he resented her question.

A shout of welcome met McCoy as he appeared in the doorway. It was plain that he was in the good books of those present as much as Tait was the opposite. For Rowan McCoy, owner of the Circle Diamond Ranch, was the leader of the cattle interests in this neighbourhood, and big Joe Tait was the most aggressive and the most bitter of the sheepmen fighting for the range.

Bovier’s Camp was in the heart of the cattle country, but Tait made no concession to the fact that he was unwelcome here. He leaned against the counter, a revolver in its holster lying along his thigh. There was something sinister and deadly in the sneer with which he returned the coldness of the men he was facing.

He glanced over the liquor circulars before he ripped open the envelope of the letter. His black eyes, set in deep sockets, began to blaze. The red veined cheeks of his beefy face darkened to an apoplectic purple. Joe Tait enraged was not a pleasant object to see.

He flung a sudden profane defiance at them all. “You’re a fine bunch of four-flushers. It’s about your size to send a skull-and-crossbones threat through the mail, but I notice you haven’t the guts to sign it. I’m not to cross the bad lands, eh? I’m to keep on the other side of the dead line you’ve drawn. And if I don’t you warn me I’ll get into trouble. To hell with your warning!” Tait crumpled the letter in his sinewy fist, flung it down, spat tobacco juice on it, and ground it savagely under his heel. “That’s what I think of your warning, McCoy. Trouble! Me, I eat trouble. If you or any of your bunch of false alarms want any you can have it right now and here.”

McCoy, sitting on a nail keg, had been talking with one of his friends. He did not move. There was a moment’s chill silence. Every man present knew that Tait was ready to back his challenge. He might be a bully, but nobody doubted his gameness.

“I’m not looking for trouble,” the cattleman said coldly.

“I thought you weren’t,” jeered Tait. “You never have been, far as I can make out.”

The blood mounted to McCoy’s face. Nobody in the room could miss the point of that last taunt. It was common knowledge in the Hill Creek country that years before Norma Davis had jilted him to run away with Joe Tait.

“I reckon you’ve said enough,” suggested Falkner, the range rider to whom Rowan had been talking. “And enough is aplenty, Joe.”

“Do I have to get your say-so before I can talk, Falkner? I’ll say to you, too, what I’m saying to the man beside you. There can’t any of you—no, nor all of you—run me out the way you did Pap Thomson. Try anything like that, and you’ll find me lying right in the door of my sheep wagon with hell popping. Hear that, McCoy?”

“Yes, I hear you.” McCoy looked at him hard. One could have gathered no impression of weakness from the lean brown face of the cattleman. The blue-gray eyes were direct and steely. Power lay in the packed muscles of the stocky frame. Confidence rested in the set of the broad shoulders and the poise of the close-cropped head. “I didn’t write that letter to you, and I don’t know who did. But I’ll give you a piece of advice. Keep your sheep on the other side of the dead line. They’ll maybe live longer.”

The sheepman shook a fist at him furiously. “That’s a threat, McCoy. Don’t you back it. Don’t you dare lift a finger to my sheep. I’ll run them where I please. I’ll bring ’em right up to the door of the Circle Diamond, too, if it suits me.”

A young ranchman lounging in the doorway cut into the talk. “I reckon you can bring ’em there, Joe, but I ain’t so sure you could take ’em away again.”

“Who’d stop me?” demanded Tait, whirling on him. “Would it be you, Jack Cole?”

“I might be there, and I might not. You never can tell.”

Tait took a step toward him. The undisciplined temper of the man was boiling up. He had for nearly two days been drinking heavily.

“Might as well settle this now—the sooner the quicker,” he said thickly.

Sharply McCoy spoke: “We’re none of us armed, Tait. Don’t make a mistake.”

The sheep owner threw his revolver on the counter. “I don’t need any gun to settle any business I’ve got with Jack Cole.”

“Don’t you start anything here, Joe Tait,” ordered the postmistress in a shrill voice. She ran out from her cage and confronted the big man indomitably. “You can’t bully me. I’m the United States Government when I’m in this room. Don’t you forget it, either.”

A shadow darkened the doorway, and a young woman came into the store. She stopped, surprised, aware that she had interrupted a scene. Her soft dark eyes passed from one to another, asking information.

There was an awkward silence. The sheepman turned with a half-suppressed oath, snatched up his weapon, thrust it into the holster, and strode from the room. Yet a moment, and the thudding of hoofs could be heard.

The postmistress turned in explanation to the girl. “It’s Joe Tait. He’s always trying to raise a rookus, that man is. But he can’t bully me, no matter how bad an actor he is. I’m not his wife.” She walked around the counter and resumed a dry manner of business. “Do you want all the mail for the Elkhorn Lodge or just your own?”

“I’ll take it all, Mrs. Stovall.”

The young woman handed through the cage opening a canvas bag, into which papers and letters were stuffed.

“Three letters for you, Miss Trovillion,” the older woman said, sliding them across to her.

“You’re good to me to-day.” The girl thanked her with a quick smile.

“I notice I’m good to you most days,” Mrs. Stovall replied with friendly sarcasm.

Ruth Trovillion buckled the mail bag and turned to go. As she walked out of the store her glance flashed curiously over the men. It lingered for a scarcely perceptible instant on McCoy.

CHAPTER IV

INTRODUCING ROWAN McCOY TO RUTH TROVILLION

McCOY followed a road that led from Bovier’s Camp into the hills. He was annoyed at the altercation with Tait that had flared up in the store. Between the sheep and cattle interests on the Fryingpan there had been a good deal of bickering and recrimination, some night raiding, an occasional interchange of shots. But for the most part there had been so far at least a decent pretense of respect for the law.

Except for Tait a compromise settlement might have been effected. But the big sheepman was not reasonable. Originally a cattleman himself, he had quarrelled violently with all of his range neighbours, and at last gone into sheep out of spite. There was no give-and-take about him. The policy of live and let live did not commend itself to his turbulent temper. What he wanted he intended to take with a high hand.

There were personal reasons why McCoy desired no trouble with him. Rowan had not seen Norma half a dozen times since she had run away with Tait in anger after a quarrel between the lovers. If she regretted her folly, no word to that effect had ever reached McCoy or any other outsider. On the few occasions when she came out into her little neighbourhood world it was with a head still high. Without impertinence, one could do no more than guess at her unhappiness. Upon one thing her former lover was determined: there would be no trouble of his making between him and the man Norma had chosen for a husband.

The cattleman turned up a cañon, followed it to its head, cut across the hills, and descended into the valley of the Fryingpan. The river was high from the spring thaw of the mountain snows. Below him he could see its swirling waters tumbling down in agitated hurry.

On the road in front of him a trap was moving toward the stream. He recognized the straight back of the slim driver as that of the girl he had seen at the post office. Evidently she was taking the cut-off back to the ranch, unaware that the bridge had been washed out by the freshet. Would she turn back or would she try the ford just below the bridge? He touched his horse with the spur and put it to a canter.

The girl drew up and viewed the remains of the bridge, then turned to the ford. Presently she drove slowly down to its edge. After a moment’s apparent hesitation she forced the reluctant horse to take the water. As the wheels sank deeper, as the turbid current swept above the axles and into the bed of the trap, the heart of the young woman failed. She gave a little cry of alarm and tried to turn back.

The man galloping toward the ford shouted a warning: “Keep going! Swing to the right!”

It is likely the driver did not hear his call. She tried to cramp to the left. The horse, frightened, plunged forward into the deep pool below the ford. The force of the stream swept horse and rig down. The girl screamed and started to rise, appalled by the whirling torrent.

Miraculously, a horse and rider appeared beside her. She was lifted bodily from the trap to the arms of a rescuer. For a few moments the cow pony struggled with the waters. It fought hard for a footing, splashed into the shallows nearer shore, and emerged safely at the farther bank.

She found herself lifted to the ground and deserted. The Heaven-sent horseman unfastened the rope at his saddle, swung it round his head, and dropped a large loop over the back of the trap. The other end he tied to the pommel of the saddle. The cow pony obeyed orders, braced its legs, and began to pull. The owner of the animal did not wait for results, but waded deep into the river and seized the bridle of the exhausted buggy horse.

Even then it was a near thing. The Fryingpan fought with a heavy plunging suction to keep its prey. The man and the horses could barely hold their own, far less make headway against the current. As to the girl, she watched the battle with big, fascinated eyes, the blood driven from her heart by terror. Soon it flashed across her brain that these three creatures of flesh and blood could not win, for while they wore out their strength in vain the cruel river pounded down on them with undiminished energy.

She flew to the rope and pulled, digging her heels into the sand for a better purchase. After what seemed to her a long time, almost imperceptibly, at first by fitful starts, the rope moved. McCoy inched his way to the shallower water and a more secure footing. Man, horse, and trap came jerkily to land.

Almost exhausted, the cattleman staggered to his bronco and leaned against its heaving flanks. His eyes met those of the girl. Her tremulous lips were ashen. He guessed that she was keeping a tight rein on a hysterical urge to collapse into tears.

“It’s all right,” he said, and she liked the pleasant smile that went with the words. “We’re all safe now. No harm done. None a-tall.”

“I thought—I was afraid——” She caught her lip between her white teeth.

“Sure. Anybody would be. You oughtn’t to have tried the ford. There should be a sign up there. I’ll get after the road commissioners.”

Ruth knew he was talking to give her time to recover composure. He went on, casually and cheerfully.

“The Fryingpan is mighty deceiving. When she’s in flood she certainly tears along in a hurry. More than one cow-puncher has been drowned in her.”

She managed a smile. “I’ve been complaining because I couldn’t find an adventure. This was a little too serious. I thought, one time, that—that you might not get out.”

“So you pulled me out. That was fine. I won’t forget it.”

The girl looked at the blisters on her soft palms, and again a faint little smile twitched at her face. “Neither shall I for a day or two. I have souvenirs.”

He began to arrange the disordered harness, rebuckling a strap here and pulling the leather into place there. Dark eyes under long, curved lashes observed him as he moved, lean-loined and broad of shoulder, the bronze of the eternal outdoors burned into his hands and neck and lean face.

“My name is Trovillion; Ruth Trovillion,” she said shyly. “I’m staying at Elkhorn Lodge, or the Dude Ranch, as you people call it.”

He shook hands without embarrassment. “My name is Rowan McCoy.”

Level eyes, with the blue of Western skies in them, looked straight into hers. A little wave of emotion beat through her veins. She knew, warned by the sure instinct of her sex, that this man who had torn her from the hands of death was to be no stranger in her life.

“I think I saw you at the store to-day. And I’ve heard of you, from Mr. Flanders.”

“Yes.”

She abandoned that avenue of approach, and came to a more personal one—came to it with a face of marble except for the live eyes.

“But for you I would have drowned,” she said, and shuddered.

“Maybe so; maybe not.”

“Yes. I couldn’t have got out alone,” she insisted. “Of course I can’t thank you. There’s no use trying. But I’ll never forget—never as long as I live.”

About her there was a proud, delicate beauty that charmed him. She was at once so slender and so vital. Her face was like a fine, exquisitely cut cameo.

“All right,” he agreed cheerfully. “Honours are easy then, Miss Trovillion. I lifted you out and you pulled me out.”

“Oh, you can say that! As if I did anything that counted.” The fount of her feelings had been touched, and she was still tremulous. It was impossible for her to dismiss this adventure as casually as he seemed ready to do. After all, it had been the most tremendous hazard of her young, well-sheltered life.

When he had made sure the trap was fit for the road, McCoy turned to his companion and helped her in. She drove slowly. The cattleman rode beside her. He was going out of his way, but he found for himself a sufficient excuse. She was a slim slip of a girl who had lived her nineteen or twenty years in cities far from the primitive dangers of the wild. Probably she was unstrung from her experience and might collapse. Anyhow, he was not going to take the chance of it.

CHAPTER V

A RIDE

STILL at the age when she was frankly the centre of her own universe, Ruth Trovillion had an abundant sense of romance. There was no intention in her decided young mind of treading a road worn dusty by the feet of the commonplace. On occasion a fine rapture filled her hours. She was still reacting to the ecstatic shock of youth’s early-morning plunge into the wonderful river of life.

Rowan McCoy had impressed himself upon her imagination. He had not come into her life with jingling spurs, garnished like Larry Silcott with all the picturesque trimmings of the frontier. Larry was too free, too fresh, she thought. But McCoy, quiet, competent son of the hard-riding West, depended on no adventitious aid of costume. He was as indigenous and genuine as one of his own hill cattle. Ruth had admirers in plenty, but they dwindled to non-heroic proportions before his brown virility, his gentle, reticent strength.

Quietly she gathered information about him. The owner of the Circle Diamond was a leader in the community by grace of natural fitness. Tim Flanders, who kept the Elkhorn Lodge, summed him up for Ruth in two sentences:

“He’s a straight-up rider, Mac is. He’ll do to take along.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked his young guest.

“You can tie to him. He’ll go through. There’s no yellow in Rowan McCoy.”

She thought over that a good deal. Her judgment concurred. So far as it went, the verdict of Flanders was sound. But it did not go far enough. During the ride to the ranch she had discovered that the cattleman had a capacity for silence. Ruth found herself fascinated by the desire to push through to the personality behind the wall of reserve.

For some time she was given no chance. It was ten days after the rescue before she saw him again.

She went on her way with what patience she could, enjoying the activities of the “dude” ranch. She rode, fished, and picnicked in the hills with the other guests. Two days were spent in climbing Big Twin Peak. In the evenings she read to her aunt while that lady indefatigably knitted. The surface of her mind was absorbed by the details of the life arranged for her. McCoy was not on the horizon of her movements, but he was very much in the map of her thoughts. She did not hear his name mentioned. To these well-to-do people from the East spending a pleasant vacation in Wyoming he did not exist. But it was impossible for Ruth to get this quiet, steady-eyed man out of her mind.

Why did he not come to see her? Yet, even as she asked herself the question, Ruth found an adequate answer. She had very little vanity. Probably she had not interested him. There was no real reason why he should call unless he wanted to do so.

Then one day, unexpectedly, she met him on a hill trail.

“Why haven’t you been to see me?” she asked, with the directness that characterized her at times.

Yet she quaked at her own audacity. He might think even though he would be too courteous to say so, that he did not care to waste the time.

He thought a moment before he committed himself to words. He had wanted to come, but he had passed through an experience which made him very reserved with women. He never called on any, nor did he go to dances or merrymakings.

“I’ve been pretty busy, Miss Trovillion,” he said.

“That’s no excuse. I might have got pneumonia from wet feet or gone into a nervous breakdown from the shock. You’ve got no right to pull a girl out of the river and then ride away and forget she ever existed. It’s not good form. They are not doing it this year.”

He laughed at the jaunty impudence of her tilted chin. Somehow she reminded him of a young, singing meadow-lark experimenting with its wings. He suspected shyness back of her audacity. Yet he was surprised at his own answer when he heard it; at least he was surprised at the impulse which had led him to make it.

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten you. I’ll be glad to come to see you, if I may.”

“When?”

“Will this evening do?”

“I’ll be looking for you, Mr. McCoy.”

The cattleman told the simple truth when he said that he had not forgotten her. The girl had been very much in his mind ever since he had left her at the gate of the Lodge. He loved all young, clean life even among animals, and she seemed to him the embodied youth of the world, free and light-footed as a fawn in the misty break of day.

When McCoy reached Elkhorn Lodge after dinner Ruth introduced him to her aunt, a thin, flat-bosomed spinster with the marks of ill health on her face. Miss Morgan and her niece had come to the Rockies for the health of the older woman, and were scheduled to make an indefinite stay. Before the cattleman had talked with her five minutes he knew that Miss Morgan viewed life from a narrow, Puritanic standpoint. He guessed that there was little real sympathy between her and the vivid girl by her side.

In her early years Ruth had been a lonely, repressed little soul. An orphaned child, she had been brought up by this maiden lady, who looked on the leggy, helter-skelter youngster with the tangled flying hair as a burden laid upon her by the Lord. Ruth had been a lawless, wilful little thing, naughty and painfully plain by the standard of her aunt; a difficult little girl to train in the way she should go.

Surprisingly she had blossomed from the ugly-duckling stage into a most attractive girl. Nobody had been more amazed at the transformation than her aunt. The change was not merely external. The manner of Ruth had become gentler, less wilful. As a nurse she had developed patience toward the invalid.

“Do you mind if Mr. McCoy and I ride out to Flat Top for the sunset?” she asked now.

“No, child. I’ll be all right. But don’t stay late,” Miss Morgan assented a little fretfully. It was one of Ruth’s ways to become absorbed in the interest of the moment to forgetfulness of everything else. This was one of the penalties her friends paid for her vivid enthusiasms.

The riders passed a poster tacked to a tree just outside the gates of the ranch. It bore this legend:

Ruth drew up to read it. She turned to her companion. “You’ll ride, I suppose? Mr. Flanders says you’re a famous bronco buster.”

“I don’t reckon I will,” he answered. “Some of the boys entered me, but I’ve decided not to go in this year.”

“Why not?”

“Gettin’ too old to be jolted around so rough,” he replied, smiling. “The younger lads can take their turn.”

“Yes, you look as though you had one foot in the grave,” she derided, with a swift glance at the muscular shoulders above the long, lean body. “Of course you’ll ride. You’ve got to. Aren’t you champion of the world?”

“That’s just a way of talkin’,” he explained. “They have one of these shows each year at Cheyenne. Other places have ’em too. The winners can’t all be champions of the world.”

“But I want to see you ride,” she told him, as though he could not without discourtesy refuse so small a favour.

He dismissed this with a smile.

From Flat Top they watched the sun go down behind a sea of rounded hills. The flame of it was in her blood, the glow of it on her face. She was in love with Wyoming these days, with the cool and crystalline air of its mornings, with the scarfs of heat waving across the desert at noon, with the porphyry mountain peaks edged with fire at even. There was this much of the poet in Ruth Trovillion, that she could go out at dewy dawn and find a miracle in the sunrise.

Impulsively she turned to her companion a face luminous with joy.

“Don’t you just love it all?”

He nodded. The picture struck a spark from his imagination. By some trick of light and shade she seemed the heart of the sunset, a golden, glowing creature of soft, warm flesh through which an ardent soul quivered and palpitated with vague yearnings and inarticulate desires.

Into the perfect peace of a harmonious world jarred a raucous shout. From a hill pocket back of Flat Top came a cloud of dust. In the falling light a dim, gray mass poured out upon the mesa. It moved with a soft rustle of small, padded feet, of wool fleeces rubbing against each other.

A horseman cantered into view and caught sight of McCoy. With a jeering laugh he shouted a greeting:

“Fine sheep weather these days, McCoy. How about cows?”

The eyes of the cattleman blazed. The girl noticed the swift flush under the tan of the cheeks, the lips that closed like a steel trap. It was plain that the man rode himself with a strong rein.

“I’m still waiting in the door of my sheep wagon for you and your friends,” scoffed the drunken voice. “And my wagon is a whole lot nearer the Circle Diamond than it was. One of these days I’ll drive up to your door like I promised.”

Still McCoy said nothing, but the muscles stood out on his clamped jaws like ropes. The sheepman rode closer, turned insolent eyes on the girl. From his ribald, hateful mirth she shrank back with a sense of degradation.

Tait turned his horse and galloped away. He shouted an order to a herder. A dog passed silently in and out of the gray mass, which moved across the mesa like an agitated wave of the sea.

The girl asked a question: “Has he crossed the dead line?”

“Yes.” Then: “What do you know about the dead line?” asked her companion, surprised.

“Oh, I have eyes and ears.” She put herself swiftly on his side. “I think you’re right. He’s bad—hateful. Your cattle were here first. He brought sheep in to spite you and his other neighbours. Isn’t that true?”

“Yes.”

McCoy wondered how much more this uncannily shrewd young person knew about the relations between him and Tait. Did she know, for instance, the story of how Norma Davis had jilted him to marry the sheepman?

“What will you do? Will you fight for the range?”

“Yes.” This was a subject the cattleman could not discuss. He dismissed it promptly. “Hadn’t we better be moving toward the ranch, Miss Trovillion?”

They rode back together in the gathering dusk.

CHAPTER VI

CHAMPION OF THE WORLD

“LARRY SILCOTT on Rocking Chair,” boomed a deep voice through a megaphone.

A girl in one of the front boxes of the grand stand saw a young cow-puncher move with jingling spurs across the wide race track toward the corral beyond. He looked up, easy and debonair as an actor, and raked with his eyes the big crowd watching him. Smile met smile, when his glance came to halt at the eager girl looking down.

Ruth Trovillion’s smile went out like the flame of a blown candle. She had not caught the name announced through the megaphone, but now she recognized him. The last time she had seen this gay youth, now sunning himself so jauntily in the public regard, had been in the orchard of Elkhorn Lodge; he had kissed her impudently, and when their eyes had met hers had flashed hatred at him for the affront he had dared to put upon her.

She turned away, flaming, chin in the air.

“Is he a good rider?” she asked the man sitting beside her.

“Wyoming doesn’t raise better riders than Larry Silcott,” he answered promptly. “He’s an A-1 rider—the best of the lot.”

“You beat him last year, didn’t you?” she challenged.

McCoy did not quite understand her imperious resentment. It seemed to go a little farther than the occasion called for. “That was the luck of the day. I happened——”

“Oh, yes, you happened!” scoffed Ruth. “You could go out and beat him now if you wanted to. Why don’t you ride? Your name is entered. I should think you would defend your championship. Everybody wants to see last year’s winner ride. I haven’t any patience with you.”

Rowan smiled. “I see you haven’t, Miss Ruth. I’ve tried to explain. I like Larry. We’re friends. Besides, I taught him his riding. Looks to me as if it is one of the younger fellow’s turn. Now is a good time for me to quit after I have won two years running.”

The young woman was not convinced, but she dropped the argument. Her resentful eyes moved back to the arena, into which a meek-looking claybank had been driven. It stood with blinking eyes, drooping at the hip, palpably uninterested in the proceedings.

Of a sudden the ears of the bronco pricked, its eyes dilated. A man in chaps was moving toward it, a rope in his hands. The loop of the lariat circled, went whistling forward, fell true over the head of the outlaw horse. The claybank reared, tried to bolt, came strangling to a halt as the loop tightened. A second rope slid into place beside the first. The horse stood trembling while a third man coaxed a blanket over its eyes.

Warily and deftly Silcott saddled, looking well to the cinch.

“All ready,” he told his assistants.

Ropes and blanket were whipped off as he swung to the seat. Rocking Chair stood motionless for a moment, bewildered at the things happening so fast. Then the outlaw realized that a human clothespin was straddling its back. It went whirling upward as if trying to tie itself into a knot. The rider clamped his knees against the sides of the bronco and swung his hat with a joyous whoop.

Rocking Chair had a reputation to live up to. It was a noted fence rower, weaver, and sunfisher. Savagely it whirled, went up in another buck, came down stiff-legged, with arched back. The jolt was like that of a pile driver, but Silcott met it with limp spine, his hat still fanning against the flank of the animal. The outlaw went round and round in a vicious circle. The incubus was still astride of its back. It bolted; jarred to a sudden, sideways halt. Spurs were rowelling its sides cruelly.

Up again it went in a series of furious bucks, one after another, short, sharp, violent. Meanwhile, Silcott, who was a trick rider, went through his little performance. He drank a bottle of ginger ale and flung away the bottle. He took the rein between his teeth and slipped off coat and waistcoat. He rode with his feet out of the stirrups. The grand stand clamoured wild applause. The young cattleman from the Open A N C was easily the hero of the day.

The outlaw horse stopped bucking as suddenly as it had begun. Larry slipped from the saddle in front of the grand stand and stood bowing, a lithe, graceful young figure of supple ease, to the plaudits which rained upon him.

Abruptly Ruth turned to McCoy. “I want you to ride,” she told him in a low voice.

The cattleman hesitated. He did not want to ride. Without saying so in words, he had let the other competitors understand that he did not mean to defend his title. There had been a good deal of pressure to induce him to drag a saddle into the arena but so far he had resisted it.

He turned to decline, but the words died on his lips. The eyes of the girl were stormy; her cheeks flushed. It was plain that for some reason she had set her heart on his winning. Why? His pulses crashed with the swift, tumultuous beating of the red blood in him. Rowan McCoy was not a vain man. It was hard for him to accept the conclusion for which his whole soul longed. But what other reason could there be for her insistence?

During the past few weeks he had been with Ruth Trovillion a great deal. He had ridden with her, climbed Old Baldy by her side, eaten picnic lunches as her companion far up in flower-strewn mountain parks. He had taught her to shoot, to fish, to make camp. They had been gay and wholesome comrades for long summer days. The new and secret thing that had come into his life he had hidden from her as if it had been a sin. The desire of his heart was impossible, he had always told himself. How could it be otherwise? This fine, spirited young creature, upon whom was stamped so ineradicably the look of the thoroughbred, would go back to her own kind when the time came. Meanwhile, let him make the best of his little day of sunshine.

“I told the boys I wasn’t expecting to ride,” he parried. “It has been rather understood that I wouldn’t.”

“But if I ask you?” she demanded.

There was no resisting that low, imperious appeal.

He looked straight into her eyes. “If you ask it, I’ll ride.”

“I do ask it.”

He rose. “It’s your say-so, little partner. I’ll let the committee know.”

The eyes of the girl followed him, a brown, sun-baked man, quiet and strong and resolute. Her glance questioned shyly what manner of man this was, after all, who had imposed himself so greatly upon her thoughts. He was genuine. So much she knew. He did not need the gay trappings of Larry Silcott to brand him a rider of the hills, foursquare to every wind that blew. Behind the curtain of his reticence she had divined some vague hint of a woman in his life. Now a queer little thrill of jealousy, savage and primeval, claimed her for the first time. She knew her own power over Rowan McCoy. It hurt her to feel that another girl had once possessed it, too.

A cow-puncher from Laramie, in yellow wool chaps and a shirt of robin’s-egg blue, took the stage after Silcott. He drew a roan with a red-hot devil of malice in its eye. The bronco hunched itself over to the fence in a series of jarring bucks, and jammed the leg of the rider against a post. The Laramie youth, beside himself with pain, caught at the saddle horn to save his seat. The nearest judge fired a revolver to tell him he was out of the running. He had “touched leather.”