Brand Blotters Part 9

"No, not the rustler, the gent between eighteen and forty-eight, object matrimony."

"I don't want to trouble you," she flung at him with her gay smile.

"No trouble at all. Fact is, I've got him in mind already," he a.s.sured her promptly.

"Oh!" A pulse of excitement was beating in her throat.

"You don't ask me who he is," suggested Norris boldly, crouched in the saddle with his weight on the far stirrup.

She had brought it upon herself, but now she dodged the issue. "'Most anyone will do, and me going on eighteen."

"You're wrong, girl. Only one out of a thousand will do for your master."

"Master, indeed! If he comes to the Bar Double G he'll find he is at the wrong address. None wanted, thank you."

"Most folks don't want what's best for them, I allow. But if they have luck it sometimes comes to them."

"Luck!" she echoed, her chin in the air.

"You heard me right. What you need is a man that ain't afraid of you, one to ride close herd on you so as to head off them stampede notions of yours. Now this lad is the very one. He is a black-haired guy, and when he says a thing----"

Involuntarily she glanced at his sleek black head. Melissy felt a sudden clamor of the blood, a pounding of the pulses.

"--he most generally means it. I've wrangled around a heap with him and there's no manner of doubt he's up to specifications. In appearance he looks like me. Point of fact, he's a dead ringer for me."

She saw her chance and flashed out. "Now you're flattering him. There can't be two as--as fascinating as Senor Norris," she mocked.

His smoldering eyes had the possessive insolence she resented and yet found so stimulating.

"Did I say there were two?" he drawled.

It was his parting shot. With a touch of the spur he was off, leaving her no time for an adequate answer.

There were no elusions and inferences about Philip Norris when he wanted to be direct. He had fairly taken her breath away. Melissy's instinct told her there was something humiliating about such a wooing. But picturesque and unconventional conduct excuse themselves in a picturesque personality.

And this man had that if nothing else.

She told herself she was angry at him, that he took liberties far beyond those of any of the other young men. Yet, somehow, she went into the house smiling. A color born of excitement burned beneath her sparkling eyes. She had entered into her heritage of womanhood and the call of s.e.x was summoning her to the adventure that is old as the garden where Eve met Adam.

CHAPTER V

THE TENDERFOOT TAKES UP A CLAIM

Mr. Diller, alias Morse, alias Bellamy, did not long remain at the Bar Double G as a rider. It developed that he had money, and, tenderfoot though he was, the man showed a shrewd judgment in his investments. He bought sheep and put them on the government forest reserve, much to the annoyance of the cattlemen of the district.

Morse, as he now called himself, was not the first man who had brought sheep into the border country. Far up in the hills were several camps of them. But hitherto these had been there on sufferance, and it had been understood that they were to be kept far from the cattle range. The extension of the government reserves changed the equation. A good slice of the range was cut off and thrown open to sheep. When Morse leased this and put five thousand bleaters upon the feeding ground the sentiment against him grew very bitter.

Lee had been spokesman of a committee appointed to remonstrate with him.

Morse had met them pleasantly but firmly. This part of the reserve had been set aside for sheep. If it were not leased by him it would be by somebody else. Therefore, he declined to withdraw his flocks. Champ lost his temper and swore that he for one would never submit to yield the range. Sharp bitter words were pa.s.sed. Next week masked men drove a small flock belonging to Morse over a precipice.

The tenderfoot retaliated by jumping a mining claim staked out by Lee upon which the a.s.sessment work had not been kept up. The cattleman contested this in the courts, lost the decision, and promptly appealed. Meanwhile, he countered by leasing from the forest supervisor part of the run previously held by his opponent and putting sheep of his own upon it.

"I reckon I'll play Mr. Morse's own game and see how he likes it," the angry cattleman told his friends.

But the luck was all with Morse. Before he had been working his new claim a month the Monte Cristo (he had changed the name from its original one of Melissy) proved a bonanza. His men ran into a rich streak of dirt that started a stampede for the vicinity.

Champ indulged in choice profanity. From his point of view he had been robbed, and he announced the fact freely to such acquaintances as dropped into the Bar Double G store.

"Dad gum it, I was aimin' to do that a.s.sessment work and couldn't jest lay my hands on the time. I'd been a millionaire three years and didn't know it. Then this d.a.m.ned Morse b.u.t.ts in and euchres me out of the claim.

Some day him and me'll have a settlement. If the law don't right me, I reckon I'm most man enough to 'tend to Mr. Morse."

It was his daughter who had hitherto succeeded in keeping the peace. When the news of the relocation had reached Lee he had at once started to settle the matter with a Winchester, but Melissy, getting news of his intention, had caught up a horse and ridden bareback after him in time to avert by her entreaties a tragedy. For six months after this the men had not chanced to meet.

Why the tenderfoot had first come West--to hide what wounds in the great baked desert--no man knew or asked. Melissy had guessed, but she did not breathe to a soul her knowledge. It was a first article of Arizona's creed that a man's past belonged to him alone, was a blotted book if he chose to have it so. No doubt many had private reasons for their untrumpeted migration to that kindly Southwest which buries ident.i.ty, but no wise citizen busied himself with questions about antecedents. The present served to sift one, and by the way a man met it his neighbors judged him.

And T. L. Morse met it competently. In every emergency with which he had to cope the man "stood the acid." Arizona approved him a man, without according him any popularity. He was too dogmatic to win liking, but he had a genius for success. Everything he touched turned to gold.

The Bar Double G lies half way between Mammoth and Mesa. Its position makes it a central point for ranchers within a radius of fifteen miles.

Out of the logical need for it was born the store which Beauchamp Lee ran to supply his neighbors with canned goods, coffee, tobacco, and other indispensables; also the eating house for stage pa.s.sengers pa.s.sing to and from the towns. Young as she was, Melissy was the competent manager of both of these.

It was one afternoon during the hour the stage stopped to let the pa.s.sengers dine that Melissy's wandering eye fell upon Morse seated at one of the tables. Anger mounted within her at the cool impudence of the man.

She had half a mind to order him out, but saw he was nearly through dinner and did not want to make a scene. Unfortunately Beauchamp Lee happened to come into the store just as his enemy strolled out from the dining-room.

The ranchman stiffened. "What you been doing in there, seh?" he demanded sharply.

"I've been eating a very good dinner in a public cafe. Any objections?"

"Plenty of 'em, seh. I don't aim to keep open house for Mr. Morse."

"I understand this is a business proposition. I expect to pay seventy-five cents for my meal."

The eyes of the older man gleamed wrathfully. "As for yo' six bits, if you offer it to me I'll take it as an insult. At the Bar Double G we're not doing friendly business with claim jumpers. Don't you evah set yo' legs under my table again, seh."

Morse shrugged, turned away to the public desk, and addressed an envelope, the while Lee glared at him from under his heavy beetling brows. Melissy saw that her father was still of half a mind to throw out the intruder and she called him to her.

"Dad, Jose wants you to look at the hoof of one of his wheelers. He asked if you would come as soon as you could."

Beauchamp still frowned at Morse, rasping his unshaven chin with his hand.

"Ce'tainly, honey. Glad to look at it."

"Dad! Please."

The ranchman went out, grumbling. Five minutes later Morse took his seat on the stage beside the driver, having first left seventy-five cents on the counter.

The stage had scarce gone when the girl looked up from her bookkeeping to see the man with the Chihuahua hat.