The man bent his lips to hers again, and her arms
stole about his neck. The calf, in the meantime, perhaps
disgusted by such absurdities, had scampered off to try
his brand-new legs again, with the result that he ran into
a low bush, turned a somersault, and landed on his back.
The mother, still doubtful of the intentions of the newcomers,
to whose malevolent presence she may have attributed
the accident, voiced a perturbed low; whereupon
there broke from the vicinity of the live oak a deep note,
not unlike the rumbling of distant thunder.
The man looked up.
“I think we’ll be going,” he said. “The Emperor has
issued an ultimatum.”
“Or a bull, perhaps,” Grace suggested, as they walked
quickly toward her horse.
“Awful!” he commented, as he assisted her into the
saddle.
Then he swung to his own.
The Emperor moved majestically toward them, his
nose close to the ground. Occasionally he stopped, pawing
the earth and throwing dust upon his broad back.
“Doesn’t he look wicked?” cried the girl. “Just look
at those eyes!”
“He’s just an old bluffer,” replied the man. “However,
I’d rather have you in the saddle, for you can’t
always be sure just what they’ll do. We must call his
bluff, though; it would never do to run from him—might
give him bad habits.”
He rode toward the advancing animal, breaking into
a canter as he drew near the bull, and striking his booted
leg with a quirt.
“Hi, there, you old reprobate! Beat it!” he cried.
The bull stood his ground with lowered head and
rumbled threats until the horseman was almost upon him;
then he turned quickly aside as the rider went past.
“That’s better,” remarked Custer, as the girl joined him.
“You’re not a bit afraid of him, are you, Custer?
You’re not afraid of anything.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he demurred. “I learned
a long time ago that most encounters consist principally of
bluff. Maybe I’ve just grown to be a good bluffer. Anyhow,
I’m a better bluffer than the Emperor. If the
rascal had only known it, he could have run me ragged.”
As they rode up the side of the basin, the man’s eyes
moved constantly from point to point, now noting the
condition of the pasture grasses, or again searching the
more distant hills. Presently they alighted upon a thin,
wavering line of brown, which zigzagged down the opposite
side of the basin from a clump of heavy brush
that partially hid a small ravine, and crossed the meadow
ahead of them.
“There’s a new trail, Grace, and it don’t belong there.
Let’s go and take a look at it.”
They rode ahead until they reached the trail, at a
point where it crossed the bottom of the basin and
started up the side they had been ascending. The man
leaned above his horse’s shoulder and examined the
trampled turf.
“Horses,” he said. “I thought so, and it’s been used a
lot this winter. You can see even now where the animals
slipped and floundered after the heavy rains.”
“But you don’t run horses in this pasture, do you?”
asked the girl.
“No; and we haven’t run anything in it since last
summer. This is the only bunch in it, and they were
just turned in about a week ago. Anyway, the horses
that made this trail were mostly shod. Now what in
the world is anybody going up there for?” His eyes
wandered to the heavy brush into which the trail disappeared
upon the opposite rim of the basin. “I’ll have
to follow that up to-morrow—it’s too late to do it to-day.”
“We can follow it the other way, toward the ranch,”
she suggested.
They found the trail wound up the hillside and crossed
the hogback in heavy brush, which, in many places, had
been cut away to allow the easier passage of a horseman.
“Do you see,” asked Custer, as they drew rein at the
summit of the ridge, “that although the trail crosses here
in plain sight of the ranch house, the brush would absolutely
conceal a horseman from the view of any one at
the house? It must run right down into Jackknife Cañon.
Funny none of us have noticed it, for there’s scarcely
a week that that trail isn’t ridden by some of us!”
As they descended into the cañon, they discovered
why that end of the new trail had not been noticed. It
ran deep and well marked through the heavy brush of a
gully to a place where the brush commenced to thin, and
there it branched into a dozen dim trails that joined and
blended with the old, well worn cattle paths of the hillside.
“Somebody’s mighty foxy,” observed the man; “but I
don’t see what it’s all about. The days of cattle runners
and bandits are over.”
“Just imagine!” exclaimed the girl. “A real mystery
in our lazy, old hills!”
The man rode in silence and in thought. A herd of
pure-bred Herefords, whose value would have ransomed
half the crowned heads remaining in Europe, grazed in
the several pastures that ran far back into those hills;
and back there somewhere that trail led, but for what
purpose? No good purpose, he was sure, or it had not
been so cleverly hidden.
As they came to the trail which they called the Camino
Corto, where it commenced at the gate leading from the
old goat corral, the man jerked his thumb toward the
west along it.
“They must come and go this way,” he said.
“Perhaps they’re the ones mother and I have heard
passing at night,” suggested the girl. “If they are, they
come right through your property, below the house—not
this way.”
He opened the gate from the saddle and they passed
through, crossing the barranco, and stopping for a moment
to look at the pigs and talk with the herdsman.
Then they rode on toward the ranch house, a half mile
farther down the widening cañon. It stood upon the
summit of a low hill, the declining sun transforming its
plastered walls, its cupolas, the sturdy arches of its
arcades, into the semblance of a Moorish castle.
At the foot of the hill they dismounted at the saddle
horse stable, tied their horses, and ascended the long flight
of rough concrete steps toward the house. As they
rounded the wild sumac bush at the summit, they were
espied by those sitting in the patio, around three sides
of which the house was built.
“Oh, here they are now!” exclaimed Mrs. Pennington.
“We were so afraid that Grace would ride right
on home, Custer. We had just persuaded Mrs. Evans
to stay for dinner. Guy is coming, too.”
“Mother, you here, too?” cried the girl. “How nice
and cool it is in here! It would save a lot of trouble if
we brought our things, mother.”
“We are hoping that at least one of you will, very
soon,” said Colonel Pennington, who had risen, and now
put an arm affectionately about the girl’s shoulders.
“That’s what I’ve been telling her again this afternoon,”
said Custer; “but instead she wants to——”
The girl turned toward him with a little frown and
shake of her head.
“You’d better run down and tell Allen that we won’t
use the horses until after dinner,” she said.
He grimaced good-naturedly and turned away.
“I’ll have him take Senator home,” he said. “I can
drive you and your mother down in the car, when you
leave.”
As he descended the steps that wound among the umbrella
trees, taking on their new foliage, he saw Allen
examining the Apache’s shoes. As he neared them,
the horse pulled away from the man, his suddenly
lowered hoof striking Allen’s instep. With an oath the
fellow stepped back and swung a vicious kick to the animal’s
belly. Almost simultaneously a hand fell heavily
upon his shoulder. He was jerked roughly back, whirled
about, and sent spinning a dozen feet away, where he
stumbled and fell. As he scrambled to his feet, white
with rage, he saw the younger Pennington before
him.
“Go to the office and get your time,” ordered Pennington.
“I’ll get you first, you son of a——”
A hard fist connecting suddenly with his chin put a
painful period to his sentence before it was completed,
and stopped his mad rush.
“I’d be more careful of my conversation, Allen, if I
were you,” said Pennington quietly. “Just because you’ve
been drinking is no excuse for that. Now go on up to
the office, as I told you to.”
He had caught the odor of whisky as he jerked the
man past him.
“You goin’ to can me for drinkin’—you?” demanded
Allen.
“You know what I’m canning you for. You know
that’s the one thing that don’t go on Ganado. You ought
to get what you gave the Apache, and you’d better beat
it before I lose my temper and give it to you!”
The man rose slowly to his feet. In his mind he was
revolving his chances of successfully renewing his attack;
but presently his judgment got the better of his desire
and his rage. He moved off slowly up the hill toward
the house. A few yards, and he turned.
“I ain’t a goin’ to ferget this, you—you——”
“Be careful!” Pennington admonished.
“Nor you ain’t goin’ to ferget it, neither, you fox-trottin’
dude!”
Allen turned again to the ascent of the steps. Pennington
walked to the Apache and stroked his muzzle.
“Old boy,” he crooned, “there don’t anybody kick you
and get away with it, does there?”
Halfway up, Allen stopped and turned again.
“You think you’re the whole cheese, you Penningtons,
don’t you?” he called back. “With all your money an’
your fine friends! Fine friends, yah! I can put one
of ’em where he belongs any time I want—the darn
bootlegger! That’s what he is. You wait—you’ll see!”
“A-ah, beat it!” sighed Pennington wearily.
Mounting the Apache, he led Grace’s horse along the
foot of the hill toward the smaller ranch house of their
neighbor, some half mile away. Humming a little tune,
he unsaddled Senator, turned him into his corral, saw
that there was water in his trough, and emptied a measure
of oats into his manger, for the horse had cooled off since
the afternoon ride. As neither of the Evans ranch hands
appeared, he found a piece of rag and wiped off the
Senator’s bit, turned the saddle blankets wet side up to
dry, and then, leaving the stable, crossed the yard to
mount the Apache.
A young man in riding clothes appeared simultaneously
from the interior of the bungalow, which stood a hundred
feet away. Crossing the wide porch, he called to
Pennington.
“Hello there, Penn! What you doing?” he demanded.
“Just brought Senator in—Grace is up at the house.
You’re coming up there, too, Guy.”
“Sure, but come in here a second. I’ve got something
to show you.”
Pennington crossed the yard and entered the house
behind Grace’s brother, who conducted him to his bedroom.
Here young Evans unlocked a closet, and, after
rummaging behind some clothing, emerged with a bottle,
the shape and dimensions of which were once as familiar
in the land of the free as the benign countenance of
Lydia E. Pinkham.
“It’s the genuine stuff, Penn, too!” he declared.
Pennington smiled.
“Thanks, old fellow, but I’ve quit,” he said.
“Quit!” exclaimed Evans.
“Yep.”
“But think of it, man—aged eight years in the wood,
and bottled in bond before July 1, 1919. The real thing,
and as cheap as moonshine—only six beans a quart. Can
you believe it?”
“I cannot,” admitted Pennington. “Your conversation
listens phony.”
“But it’s the truth. You may have quit, but one little
snifter of this won’t hurt you. Here’s this bottle already
open—just try it”; and he proffered the bottle
and a glass to the other.
“Well, it’s pretty hard to resist anything that sounds
as good as this does,” remarked Pennington. “I guess
one won’t hurt me any.” He poured himself a drink and
took it. “Wonderful!” he ejaculated.
“Here,” said Evans, diving into the closet once more.
“I got you a bottle, too, and we can get more.”
Pennington took the bottle and examined it, almost
caressingly.
“Eight years in the wood!” he murmured. “I’ve got
to take it, Guy. Must have something to hand down to
posterity.” He drew a bill fold from his pocket and
counted out six dollars.
“Thanks,” said Guy. “You’ll never regret it.”
