The Range Boss Part 2

"Mr. Masten isn't my brother," denied the girl. The color in her face heightened.

"Well, now," said the rider. He bent his head and patted the pony's mane to hide his disappointment. Again, so it seemed to the girl, he was deliberately delaying, and she bit her lips with vexation.

Willard also seemed to have the same thought, for he shouted angrily: "While you are talking there, my man, I am freezing. Isn't there some way for you to get my party and the wagon out of there?"

"Why, I expect there's a way," drawled the rider, fixing Masten with a steady eye; "I've been wonderin' why you didn't mention it before."

"Oh Lord!" said Masten to the girl, his disgust making his voice husky, "can you imagine such stupidity?"

But the girl did not answer; she had seen a glint in the rider's eyes while he had been looking at Masten which had made her draw a deep breath. She had seen guile in his eyes, and subtlety, and much humor.

Stupidity! She wondered how Masten could be so dense!

Then she became aware that the rider was splas.h.i.+ng toward her, and the next instant she was looking straight at him, with not more than five feet of s.p.a.ce between them. His gaze was on her with frank curiosity, his lean, strong face glowing with the bloom of health; his mouth was firm, his eyes serene, virility and confidence in every movement of his body.

And then he was speaking to her, his voice low, gentle, respectful, even deferential. He seemed not to have taken offense at Willard, seemed to have forgotten him.

"I reckon you-all will have to ride out of here on my horse, ma'am," he said, "if you reckon you'd care to. Why, yes, I expect that's right; I'd ought to take the old lady an' gentleman first, ma'am," as the girl indicated them.

He backed his pony and smiled at Aunt Martha, who was small, gray, and sweet of face. He grinned at her--the grin of a grown boy at his grandmother.

"I reckon you'll go first, Aunty," he said to her. "I'll have you high an' dry in a jiffy. You couldn't ride there, you know," he added, as Aunt Martha essayed to climb on behind him. "This Patches of mine is considerable cantankerous an' ain't been educated to it. It's likely he'd dump us both, an' then we'd be freezin' too." And he glanced sidelong at Willard.

Aunt Martha was directed to step on the edge of the buckboard. Trembling a little, though smiling, she was lifted bodily and placed sidewise on the saddle in front of him, and in this manner was carried to the bank, far up on the slope out of the deep mud that spread over the level near the water's edge, and set down gently, voicing her thanks.

Then the rescuer returned for Uncle Jepson. On his way to join Aunt Martha, Uncle Jepson, who had watched the rider narrowly during his talk with Willard, found time to whisper:

"I had a mule once that wasn't any stubborner than Willard Masten."

"You don't recollect how you cured him of it?"

"Yes sir, I do. I thumped it out of him!" And Uncle Jepson's eyes glowed vindictively.

"I reckon you've got a heap of man in you, sir," said the rider. He set Uncle Jepson down beside Aunt Martha and turned his pony back toward the river to get his remaining pa.s.senger. Masten waved authoritatively to him.

"If it's just the same to you, my man, I'll a.s.sist Miss Ruth to land.

Just ride over here!"

The rider halted the pony and sat loosely in the saddle, gravely contemplating the driver across the sea of mud that separated them.

"Why, you ain't froze yet, are you!" he said in pretended astonishment.

"Your mouth is still able to work considerable smooth! An' so you want to ride my horse!" He sat, regarding the Easterner in deep, feigned amazement. "Why, Willard," he said when it seemed he had quite recovered, "Patches would sure go to sun-fis.h.i.+n' an' dump you off into that little ol' suck-hole ag'in!" He urged the pony on through the water to the buckboard and drew up beside the girl.

Her face was crimson, for she had not failed to hear Masten, and it was plain to the rider that she had divined that jealously had impelled Masten to insist on the change of riders. Feminine perverseness, or something stronger, was in her eyes when the rider caught a glimpse of them as he brought his pony to a halt beside her. He might now have made the mistake of referring to Masten and thus have brought from her a quick refusal to accompany him, for he had made his excuse to Masten and to have permitted her to know the real reason would have been to attack her loyalty. He strongly suspected that she was determined to make Masten suffer for his obstinacy, and he rejoiced in her spirit.

"We're ready for you now, ma'am."

"Are you positively certain that Patches won't go to 'sunfis.h.i.+ng' with me?" she demanded, as she poised herself on the edge of the buckboard. He flashed a pleased grin at her, noting with a quickening pulse the deep, rich color in her cheeks, the soft white skin, her dancing eyes--all framed in the hood of the rain cloak she wore.

He reached out his hands to her, clasped her around the waist and swung her to the place on the saddle formerly occupied by Aunt Martha. If he held her to him a little more tightly than he had held Aunt Martha the wind might have been to blame, for it was blowing some stray wisps of her hair into his face and he felt a strange intoxication that he could scarcely control.

And now, when she was safe on his horse and there was no further danger that she would refuse to ride with him, he gave her the answer to her question:

"Patches wouldn't be unpolite to a lady, ma'am," he said quietly, into her hair; "he wouldn't throw you."

He could not see her face--it was too close to him and his chin was higher than the top of her head. But he could not fail to catch the mirth in her voice:

"Then you lied to Willard!"

"Why, yes, ma'am; I reckon I did. You see, I didn't want to let Patches get all muddied up, ridin' over to Willard."

"But you are riding him into the mud now!" she declared in a strangely m.u.f.fled voice.

"Why, so I am, ma'am," he said gleefully; "I reckon I'm sure a box-head!"

He handed her down a minute later, beside Uncle Jepson and Aunt Martha, and he lingered another moment near her, for his proximity to her had set his blood tingling, and there was an unnamable yearning in his breast to be near her. He had pa.s.sed hours in looking upon her picture, dreaming of this minute, or another like it, and now that his dream had come true he realized that fulfilment was sweeter than antic.i.p.ation. He was hugely pleased with her.

"She's a lot better lookin' than her picture," he told himself as he watched her. She had her back to him, talking with her relatives, but she did not need to face him to arouse his wors.h.i.+p. "Didn't I know she was little," he charged himself, estimating her height, "she won't come anywhere near reachin' my shoulder."

He had not forgotten Masten. And a humorous devil sported in his eye as he wheeled his pony and fixed his gaze on that gentleman.

"Speciments travel around most anywheres," he reflected. "This here's a swell head with a grouch. I reckon he ain't a serious friend of hers, or she wouldn't have stood for me rescuin' her when he offered himself that generous." The recollection convulsed him, and he bowed his head over the pony's neck to hide the laugh. When he looked up, it was to see Masten standing rigid, watching him, wrath on his face.

"I suppose I'm to stand here and freeze while you sit over there and laugh your fool head off!" shouted the Easterner. "I've got some dry clothing in my trunk on the wagon, which I might put on, if I could induce you to hurry a little."

"Why, shucks. I come mighty near forgettin' you, Willard," said the rider. "An' so you've got other clothes! Only they're in your trunk on the buckboard, an' you can't get 'em. An' you're freezin' an' I'm laughin' at you. You've got a heap of trouble, ain't you, Willard. An'

all because you was dead set on goin' to the left when you ought to have gone to the right."

"Do hurry! Wont you, please?" said the girl's voice, close to his stirrup.

He looked guiltily at her, for he had been about to say some vitriolic things to Masten, having almost lost patience with him. But at her words his slow good nature returned.

"I'm sure goin' to hurry, ma'am."

He urged the pony into the water again, rode to the buckboard, stepped off, and kneeling in the seat reached into the water and worked with the harness. Then, walking along the wagon tongue, which was slightly out of the water, he again reached into the water and fumbled with the harness.

Then he stepped back, slapped the blacks and urged them with his voice, and they floundered out of the water and gained the bank, where they stood shaking the water from their glistening bodies.

He mounted his pony again and rode to the rear of the buckboard. Taking the braided hair rope that hung from the pommel of his saddle he made a hitch around the center of the rear axle. Then he wheeled his pony until it faced away from the buckboard, rode the length of the rope carefully, halted when it was taut, and then slowly, with his end of the rope fastened securely to the saddle horn, pulled the buckboard to a level on the river bottom.

Returning to the rear of the buckboard he unfastened the rope, coiled it, and rode to the bank, catching the blacks and leading them up the slope beyond where the girl, her aunt and uncle stood. He gently asked Uncle Jepson to hold the blacks, for fear they might stray, and then with a smile at the girl and Aunt Martha, he returned to the buckboard. There he uncoiled his rope again and attached one end of it to the tongue of the wagon, again, as before, riding away until the rope grew taut. Then, with a word to the pony, the wagon was drawn through the water to the edge of the sea of mud.

This mud looked treacherous, but it was the only way out; and so, after a pause for rest, he urged the pony on again. The buckboard traveled its length--then lurched into a rut and refused to move another foot, in spite of the straining of the pony and its rider's urgings.

The rider paused, turned in the saddle and scratched his head in perplexity.

"I reckon we've run ag'in a snag, Patches," he said. He scrutinized the slopes. "I expect we'll have to try one of them, after all," he decided.

"You were foolish to try to draw the wagon out with that thing, in the first place," loudly criticized Masten. "If you had hitched the horses to the wagon after you had pulled it out of the hole, why--"

The rider looked at the fault-finder, his eyes narrowed.