Chapter 7. The Chance Of Reclamation

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_ CHAPTER VII. THE CHANCE OF RECLAMATION

Beyond the bunkhouse, which was the nearest building to the corral, stood the low but roomy log structure of the main ranch house. As Ashton came around the front corner, close behind Gowan and the girl, Knowles rose from his comfortable chair in the rustic porch, knocked out the half burned contents of his pipe and extended a freckled, corded hand to the stranger.

"Howdy, Mr. Ashton! Glad to see you!" he said with hearty hospitality. "Hope you've come to ease up our lonesomeness by a month or two's visit."

"Why, I--You're too kind, really!" replied Ashton, his voice quavering and breaking at the unexpected cordiality of the welcome. "If you--I shall take advantage of your generous offer. You see, I'm rather in a box, owing to my--" He caught himself up, and tightened his slackening lip. "But you'll pardon me if I ask you to let me do something in return for your hospitality."

"We don't sell our hospitality on the range," brusquely replied the cowman.

"Oh, no, no, I did not mean--I could not pay a penny. I'm utterly destitute--a--a pauper!" A spasm of bitter despair contorted his handsome face.

Knowles and the girl hastily looked away from him, that they might not see him in his weakness. But he rallied and forced a rather unsteady laugh at himself. "You see, I haven't quite got used to it yet. I've always had money. I never really had to work. Now I must learn to earn a living. It's very good of you, Mr. Knowles, but--there's that veal. If only you'll let me work out what I owe you."

"You don't owe me a cent for the yearling," gruffly replied the cowman. "Don't know what I could put you at, anyway."

"Might use him to shoo off the rattlers and jackrabbits from in front the mowing machine," suggested Gowan.

"Mr. Ashton can ride," interposed the girl, with a friendliness of tone that brought Gowan to a thin-lipped silence.

"That's something," said Knowles, gazing speculatively at the slim aristocratic figure of the tenderfoot. "You're not built for pitching hay, but like as not you have the makings of a puncher. Ever throw a rope?"

"Never. I shall start practicing the art--at once."

"No, not until you and Kid have had dinner," gayly contradicted the girl. "We've had ours. But Yuki always has something ready. Kid, if you'll show Mr. Ashton where to wash, I'll tell Yuki."

She darted through the open doorway into the house. At a curt nod from Gowan, Ashton followed him around to the far side of the house, leaving Knowles in the act of hastily reloading his pipe. Under a lean-to that covered a door in the side of the house was a barrel of water and a bench with two basins. On a row of pegs above hung a number of towels, all rumpled but none dirty.

Gowan pointed to a box of unused towels, and proceeded to lather and wash himself. Ashton took a towel, and after rinsing out the second washbasin, made as fastidious a toilet as the scant conveniences of the place would permit. There were combs and a fairly good mirror above the soap shelf. Gowan went in by the side door, without waiting for his companion. Ashton presently followed him, having looked in vain for a razor to rid himself of his two days' growth of beard.

The long table told him that he had entered the ranch mess-hall, or rather, dining-room. Though the table was covered with oilcloth and the rough-hewn logs of the outer walls were lime-plastered only in the chinks, the seats were chairs instead of benches, and between the gay Mexican serape drapes of the clean windows hung several well-done water color landscapes, appropriately framed in unbarked pine. On the oiled deal floor were scattered half a dozen Navajo rugs.

Gowan had taken a seat at one end of the table. As Ashton sat down at the neatly laid place opposite him, a silent, smiling, deft-handed Jap came in from the kitchen with a heaping trayful of dishes. For the most part, the food was ordinary ranch fare, but cooked with the skill of a chef. The exceptions were the fresh milk and delicious unsalted butter. On most cattle ranches, the milk comes from "tin cows" and the butter from oleomargarine tubs.

The two diners were well along in their meal, eating as earnestly and as taciturnly as the Jap served, when Miss Isobel came in with her father. The girl had dressed for the afternoon in a gown of the latest style, whose quiet color and simple lines harmonized perfectly with her surroundings. She smiled impartially at puncher, tenderfoot, and Jap.

"Thank you, Yuki. I see you did not keep our hungry hunters waiting.--Mr. Ashton, I have told Daddy about that shooting."

"It's a mighty strange happening. You might tell us the full particulars," said Knowles.

Ashton at once gave a fairly accurate account of the affair. He could hardly exaggerate the peril he had incurred, and the touch of exultance with which he described his defeat of the murderer was quite pardonable in a tenderfoot.

"Strange--mighty strange. Can't understand it," commented the cowman when Ashton had finished his account.

"It shore is, Mr. Knowles," added Gowan. "The only thirty-eight on the ranch is mine. That seems to clear our people."

"Of course! It could not possibly be any of our people!" exclaimed the girl.

"Mr. Ashton thinks it might have been his guide," went on Gowan.

"His guide? What caliber was his rifle?" shrewdly queried the cowman.

"Why, I--really I cannot remember," answered Ashton. "I know it was of a larger bore than mine, but that is all."

"Um-m," considered Knowles. "Looks rather like he's the man. Can't think of anyone else. Trouble is, if he was laying in wait for you, his horse would be fresh. Must have covered a right smart bit of territory by now."

"I'll go out and take a look at his tracks," said Gowan, rising with a readiness that brought a nod of approval from his employer.

"You'll be careful, Kid," cautioned the girl, with a shade of concern in her tone.

"He'll keep his eye open, Chuckie," reassured her father. "It's the other fellow wants to be careful, if he hasn't already vamoosed. Hey, Kid?"

"I'll get him, if I get the chance," laconically replied Gowan, looking from the girl to Ashton with the characteristic straightening of his lips that marked the tensing of his emotions.

As he left the room Miss Isobel smiled and nodded to Ashton. "You see how friendly he is, in spite of his cold manner to strangers. I thought he had taken a dislike to you, yet you saw how readily he offered to go out after your assailant."

"More likely it's because he thinks it would discredit us to let such a scoundrel get away," differed her father. "However, he'll leave you alone, Mr. Ashton, if you stay with us as a guest, and will only haze you a bit, if you insist upon joining our force."

"You mean, working for you? I must insist on that," said Ashton, with an eager look at the girl. "If only I can do well enough to be employed right along!"

The cowman grunted, and winked solemnly at his daughter. "Yes, I can understand your feeling that way. How about the winter, though? You mayn't like it over here so well then."

Ashton flushed and laughed at the older man's shrewdness; hesitated, and confessed candidly: "No, I should prefer Denver in winter."

Miss Isobel blushed in adorable payment of his compliment, but thrust back at him: "We bar cowboys in the Sacred Thirty-six."

He winced. Her stroke had pierced into his raw wound.

"Oh!--oh!" she breathlessly exclaimed. "I didn't mean to--Oh, I'm so sorry!"

He dashed the tears from his eyes. "No, you--don't apologize! It's only that I'm--Please don't fancy I'm a baby! You see, when a fellow has always lived high--on top, you know--and then to have everything go out from under him without warning!"

"Keep a stiff upper lip, son," advised Knowles. "You'll pull through all right. It isn't everyone in your fix that would be asking for work."

Ashton laughed a trifle unsteadily. "It's very kind of you to say that, Mr. Knowles. I--I wish a steady position, winter as well as summer."

"How about Denver?" asked Knowles.

"That can wait," replied Ashton. He met the girl's smile of approval, and rallied fully. "Yes, that can wait--and so can I."

Again the girl blushed, but she found a bantering rejoinder: "With you and Kid and Daddy all waiting for me to come home, I suppose I'll have to cut the season short."

"The winters here are like those you read about up at the North Pole," the cowman informed Ashton. "But we get our sunshine back along in the spring."

"Oh, Daddy! you're a poet!" cried his daughter, flinging her arm around his sunburnt neck.

"Wish I were one!" enviously sighed Ashton. The cowman gave him a look that brought him to his feet. "Mr. Knowles," he hastened to ask, "if you'll kindly tell me what my work is to be this afternoon."

The older man's frown relaxed. "Did you come out here from Stockchute?"

"Yes."

"Think you could find your way back?"

"Why, yes; though we wandered all around--But surely, Mr. Knowles, you'll not require me--"

"I want a man to ride over with some letters and fetch the mail. I'll need Gowan for work you can't do. Chuckie was to have gone; but I can't let her now, until we're more sure about that man who shot at you."

"I see."

"Well, have you got the nerve, in case the man is loose over that way?"

Ashton's eyes flashed. "I'll go! Perhaps I'll get another crack at the scoundrel."

"Keep cool. It's ninety-nine chances in the hundred he's on the run and'll keep going all week."

"Shall I start now? As we came by a very roundabout way--We went first in the opposite direction, and then skirted High Mesa down from the mountains. So, you see, I may have a little difficulty--"

"No you won't. There's our wagon trail. Even if you got off that, all you'd have to do would be to keep headed for Split Peak. That's right in line with Stockchute. But you'll not start till morning. I haven't got all my letters written. That'll give you all day to go and come. It's only twenty-five miles over there. Chuckie, you show this new puncher of ours over the place, while I write those letters."

"I'll start teaching him how to throw a rope," volunteered the girl.

She led the way out through a daintily furnished front room, in which Ashton observed an upright piano and other articles of culture that he would never have expected to come upon in this remote section. In passing, the girl picked up a wide-brimmed lacy hat.

Once outside, she first took Ashton for a walk up Plum Creek to where half a dozen men were at work with a mowing machine and horse rakes making hay of the rich bunch-grass.

"Daddy feeds all he can in winter," she explained. "The spring when I first came back from Denver I cried so over the starving cattle that he promised to always afterwards cut and stack all the hay he could. And he has found it pays to feed well. We would put a lot of land into oats, but, as you see, there's not enough water in the creek."

"That's where an irrigation system would come in," remarked Ashton.

"Oh, I hope you don't think it possible to water our mesa!" she cried. "I told you how it would break up our range."

"I assure you, I don't think at all," he replied. "I'm not a reclamation engineer--never specialized on hydraulics."

She flashed an odd look at him. "You never? But Mr. Blake--that wonderful engineer of the Zariba Dam--he would know, wouldn't he?"

"I--suppose he would--that is, if he--" Ashton hesitated, and exclaimed, "But that's just it!"

"What?" she asked.

"Why, to--to have him come here. He's the luckiest for blundering on ways to do things," muttered Ashton. He added with growing bitterness: "Yes, if there's any way at all to do it, you'd have him flooding your whole range--deluging it. He's got all those millions to back him."

"You do not like him," said the girl. She looked off towards High Mesa, her face glowing with suppressed excitement. "No doubt you are right--as to his ability. But--don't you see?--if it can be done, it is bound to be done sooner or later. All the time Daddy and I--and Kid, too--are living under this constant dread that it may be possible. But if such an engineer as--as Mr. Blake came and looked over the situation and told us we needn't fear--don't you see how--?"

"You don't mean that you--?" Ashton, in turn, left his question unfinished and averted his face.

"Yes," she answered. "I'm sure it will be best to put an end to this uncertainty. So I believe I shall send for--for Mr. Blake."

"But--why for--for him--in particular?" he stammered.

"I am sorry you dislike him," she said, regaining her composure when she saw that he too was agitated.

He did not reply. She tactfully changed the subject. By the time they had circled around, back to the half open feed-sheds, he was gayly chatting with her on music and the drama. When they came down to the horse corral she proceeded to lecture him on the duties of a cowboy and showed him how to hold and throw a rope. Under her skillful tuition, he at last learned the knack of casting an open noose.

Evening was near when they returned to the house. As before, they caught Knowles in the front porch contentedly puffing at his pipe. He dropped it down out of sight. The girl shook her finger at him, nodded to Ashton, and went indoors. Immediately the cowman put his pipe back into his mouth and drew another from his pocket, together with an unopened sack of tobacco.

"Smoke?" he asked.

Ashton's eyes gleamed. In the girl's presence he had been able to restrain the fierce craving that had tortured him since dinner. Now it so overmastered him that he almost snatched the pipe and tobacco out of the cowman's hand. The latter gravely shook his head.

"Got it that bad, have you?" he deplored.

Ashton could not answer until his pipe was well under way.

"I'm--I'm breaking off," he replied. "Haven't had a cigarette all day--nor anything else. A-ah!"

"Glad you like it," said Knowles. "A pipe is all right with this kind of tobacco. You can't inhale it like you can cigarettes, unless you want to strangle."

"I shall break off entirely as soon as I can," asserted Ashton.

"Well," considered Knowles, "I'm not saying you can't or won't. It's mighty curious what a young fellow can do to please a pretty girl. Just the same, I'd say from the color of Kid's fingers that he hasn't forgotten how to roll a fat Mexican cigaretto.--Hello! 'Talk of the devil--' Here he comes now."

Gowan came around the corner of the house, his spurs jingling. His eyes were as cold and his face as emotionless as usual.

"Well?" asked Knowles. "Have a seat."

"Didn't get him," reported Gowan, dropping into a chair. "Near as I could make out, he cut straight across for the railroad, on the jump."

"Then it must have been that guide!" exclaimed Ashton.

"Looks that way," added Knowles. "Glad of it. We won't see him again, unless you want to notify the sheriff, when you ride over tomorrow."

"No, oh, no. I am satisfied to be rid of him."

"If he don't come back," remarked Gowan.

"He won't," predicted Knowles.

"Well, not for a time maybe," agreed Gowan. _

Read next: Chapter 8. A Man's Size Horse

Read previous: Chapter 6. A Test Of Caliber

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