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With Hoops of Steel, a novel by Florence Finch Kelly |
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Chapter 17 |
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_ CHAPTER XVII Emerson Mead heard the story which Ellhorn and Tuttle told and looked at the heap of yellow nuggets without enthusiasm. His face was gloomy and there was a sadness in his eyes that neither of his friends had ever seen there before. He demurred over their proposal that he should share with them, saying that he would rather they should have it all and that he had no use for so much money. When they insisted and Tom said, with a little catch in his voice, "Emerson, we can't enjoy any of it if you-all don't have your share," he replied, "Well, all right, boys. I reckon no man ever had better friends than you are." Judge Harlin was still at the ranch, and while he and Nick and Tom were excitedly weighing the nuggets, Mead slipped out to the corral, saddled a horse and galloped across the foothills. Tuttle watched him riding away with concern in his big, round face. "Judge," he said, "what's the matter with Emerson? Is he sick?" "I guess not. He didn't say anything about it." "Did you bring him any bad news?" "Not that I know of." "Have them fellows over in Plumas been hatchin' out any more deviltry?" "N-no, I think not. Oh, yes, I did hear that Colonel Whittaker and Daniels and Halliday were going over to the White Sands to hunt for Will Whittaker's body. I told Emerson so. That's the only thing I know of that would be likely to disturb him." A quick glance of intelligence flashed between Tuttle's eyes and Ellhorn's. Each was recalling Mead's promise to surrender if Will Whittaker's body could be produced. Tuttle stood silent, with his hands in his pockets, looking across the foothills to where Mead's figure was disappearing against the horizon. Then without a word he walked to the corral, saddled a horse, and went off on the gallop in the same direction. He came upon his friend at Alamo Springs, ten miles away. This was the best water hole on Mead's ranch, and, indeed, the best in all that part of the Fernandez mountains, and was the one which the Fillmore Company particularly coveted. Its copious yield of water never diminished, and around the reservoir which Mead had constructed, half a mile below the spring, a goodly grove of young cottonwoods, which he had planted, made for the cattle a cool retreat from midday suns. Tuttle found Mead standing beside the reservoir, flicking the water with his quirt, while the horse, with dropped bridle, waited meekly beside him. Tom dismounted and stood by Mead's side, making some remark about the cattle that were grazing within sight. "Tommy," Emerson said abruptly, "I've about decided that I'll give up this fight, let the Fillmore folks have the damned place for what they will give, and pull my freight." Tom looked surprised at this unheralded proposition, but paid no further attention to it. Instead, he plunged at once into the subject that concerned him. "Emerson, what's the matter with you?" "Nothing," Mead replied, looking at the horizon. "Emerson, you're lying, and you know it." "Well, then, nothing that can be helped." "How do you know it can't?" Mead shrugged his shoulders and rested his hand upon his horse's neck. It straightway cuddled its head against his body and began nosing his pockets. Mead brought out a lump of sugar and made the beast nod its age for the reward. Tom watched him helplessly, noting the hopeless, gloomy look on his face, and wondered what he ought to do or say. He wished Nick had come along. Nick never was at a loss for words. But his great love came to his rescue and he blurted out: "Have you tried to do anything?" "It's no use. There's nothing to be done. It's something that can't be helped, and I'd better just get out." "Can't I--can't Nick and me do anything?" "No." Tom Tuttle was discouraged by this answer, for he knew that it meant that the trouble, whatever it was, must be beyond the help of rifles and revolvers. Still, he thought that it must have some connection with the Whittaker murder, and he guessed that Mead was in fear of something--discovery, apprehension, the result of a trial--that he meant to get rid of the whole thing by quietly leaving the country. Tom's brain required several minutes in which to reach this conclusion, but only a second longer to decide that if this was what Emerson wanted to do, it was the right thing and should have his help. "Well," he said, "if you want to pull out on the quiet, Nick and me will stand off the Republicans over at Plumas till you get out of their reach." "Oh, I don't mean to run away." Mead picked up the bridle and with one hand on the pommel turned suddenly around. There was a half smile about his mouth, which his sad eyes belied. Tom's idea of the case had just occurred to him. "Don't you worry about it, Tom. It has nothing to do with the Whittaker case, nor with the political fights in Las Plumas." They remounted and cantered silently toward home. Tom was revolving in his mind everything he knew about his friend, trying to find the key to the present situation. After a long time he recalled the conversation he and Ellhorn had had, as they sat on the top of the cattle-pen fence at Las Plumas, concerning the possibility of Mead's being in love. "Golly! I can't ask him about that!" Tuttle thought, spurring his horse to faster pace. "But I reckon I'll have to. I've got to find out what's the matter with him, and then Nick and me have got to help him out, if we can." He rode close beside Mead and began: "Say, Emerson--" Then he coughed and blushed until his mustache looked a faded yellow against the deep crimson of his face. He glanced helplessly around, vaguely wishing some enemy might suddenly rise out of the hills whom it would be necessary to fight. But no living thing, save Emerson's own cattle, was in sight. So, having begun, he rushed boldly on: "Say, Emerson, I don't want to be too curious about your affairs, but--this--this trouble you're in--has it--is it--anything about a--a girl?" Mead's spurs instinctively touched his horse into a gallop as he answered, "Yes." "Miss Delarue?" "Yes." "Wouldn't her father let her have you?" Mead pulled his sombrero over his eyes with a sudden jerk, as the thought drove into his brain that he had not asked for her. The idea of asking Marguerite Delarue to marry him loomed before him as a gigantic impossibility, a thing not even to be dreamed of. He set his teeth together as he put into words for the first time the thing that was making him heart-sick, and plunged his spurs into the horse's flank with a thrust that sent it flying forward in a headlong run: "She's going to marry Wellesly." Tuttle lagged behind and thought about the situation. Sympathize though he did with Mead's trouble, he could not help a little feeling of gratification that after all there was to be no wife to come between them and take Emerson away from him and Nick. Emerson would forget all about it in a little while and their lifelong friendship would go on and be just as it had always been. On the whole, he felt pleased, and at the same time ashamed that he was pleased, that Miss Delarue was going to marry Wellesly. "I don't think much of her judgment, though," he commented to himself, contemptuously. "Any girl that would take that scrub Wellesly when she might have Emerson Mead--well, she can't amount to much! Bah! Emerson's better off without her!" That evening, as the four men sat smoking under the cottonwoods, Mead said quietly: "Judge, I'm goin' to pull my freight." "What do you mean, Emerson?" "I mean that this country will be better off without me and I'll be better off without it. I'm goin' to light out." "Soon?" "As soon as I can give away this ranch to the Fillmore outfit, or anybody that will have it. Nick, you and Tom better take it. I'll give it to you for love and affection and one dollar, if you want to take the fight along with it." "Nothing would please me better," Nick replied, "than to clean up all your old scores against the Fillmore outfit, but I reckon if we take it we'll just run it for you until you-all come back." "All right. I'll turn it over to you to-morrow. You can have all you can make out of it and if I'm not back inside of five years you can divide it between you." "Everybody will say you are running away from the Whittaker case and that you are afraid to face a trial," said Judge Harlin. "They may say what they damn please," replied Mead. Something like a smothered sob sounded from Tuttle's chair, and he exclaimed fiercely, "They'd better not say that to me!" "There's no likelihood," said Judge Harlin, "that the grand jury will indict you, as things stand now, or that the case would amount to much if they should. If you want to stay and face the music, Emerson, I don't think you need to feel apprehensive about the result." "Oh, I'm not afraid of the trial, if there should be one. But I don't think there'll be any. I'm not going to submit to arrest, trial, or anything else, until they can prove that Will Whittaker's dead, and they can't do that. I told Wellesly that I would let them arrest me whenever they can prove that Will Whittaker died with his boots on, and I'll stick to my word. I'll come back from anywhere this side of hell for my trial whenever they can prove it, and you can tell 'em so, Judge. But I'm tired of this country and done with it, and I mean to pull my freight to-morrow." "If you want to start from Plumas you'd better ride over with me," said Harlin, "and you'd better go prepared for trouble, for the Republicans won't let you leave the country if they can help it." "All right. They can have all the trouble they want." "You bet they can! All they want, and a whole heap more than they'll want when it comes!" exclaimed Nick. "That's what's the matter! We'll see that they get it!" added Tom. The next morning they stowed the gold nuggets under the seat of Judge Harlin's buggy, in which rode Mead and Harlin, with rifles and revolvers. Tuttle and Ellhorn rode on horseback, each with a revolver in his holster and a rifle slung beside him. Tom Tuttle was much disturbed because he alone knew the secret reason for Emerson Mead's abrupt departure. He thought Nick ought to know it, too, but he could not persuade himself that it would be the square thing for him to tell it to Ellhorn. "Nick ought to know it," he said to himself, "or he'll sure go doin' some fool thing, thinkin' Emerson's goin' away on account of the Whittaker business, but I reckon Emerson don't want me to leak anything he told me yesterday. No, I sure reckon Emerson would say he didn't want me to go gabblin' that to anybody. But Nick, he's got to know it." After a time he chanced to recall the gossip about Miss Delarue and Wellesly, which Judge Harlin had told him, and decided that he was relieved from secrecy on that point. Still, he felt self-conscious and as if he were rubbing very near to Emerson's secret when he rode beside Ellhorn and exclaimed: "Say, Nick, did Judge Harlin tell you that Wellesly and Frenchy Delarue's daughter are going to be married next fall?" "The hell they are! Say, he's in luck, a whole heap better than he deserves!" Then a light broke over Nick's face, as he shot a glance at the carriage behind them. He slapped his thigh and exclaimed: "Jerusalem! Tom, that's why Emerson is pullin' his freight!" At the moment, Tom felt guilty, as if he had betrayed a confidence, and he merely said, "Maybe it is." "I might have known Nick would see through it in a minute," he said to himself afterward. "Well, I reckon it's all right. He knows now, and he'd sure have heard that they are going to be married, anyway." _ |
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