Judith of Blue Lake Ranch Part 8

"Don't know," he said frankly. "He didn't say."

"Well," said Judith, "I'll tell you one thing, Ed Masters. If you are one of the loaf-around kind you'd better call for your time to-night.

If there's anything for you to do, go do it. Don't wait for Trevors.

He's gone. Yes, for good. You can report to me here the first thing in the morning. Now send me Crowdy."

"He's down in the hospital and the hospital phone is out of order."

"And you're an electrician, hanging around for orders! That's your first job. Send the first man you can get your hands on to tell Crowdy I say not to touch one of those calves with the lung-worm. And not to do anything else but get ready to talk with me. I'll be down in half an hour."

She clicked up the receiver, drank a cup of lukewarm coffee, noting subconsciously that Jose must have had a fire ready against the time of her awakening, and again consulted the files before her. Then again she used the telephone, ringing the Lower End office. This time it was another voice answering her.

"Where's Masters?" she asked.

"Gone down to the cow hospital," was the answer.

"Where's Johnson, the irrigation foreman?"

"Out in the south fields."

"And Dennings?"

"Went to look the olives over."

"Send out for both of them. I'm coming right down as fast as a horse will carry me and I want to talk with them. Wait a minute--I'll tell you when I'm through with you. Who are you, anyway?"

"Williams, the ranch carpenter."

"What _are_ you doing to-day? Repairs needed at the office where you are?"

"No. You see----"

"You bet I see!" she cried warmly. "The first thing I see is that I've got more men on this job than I need. If there's no work for you to do, call tonight for your time. If you've got anything to do, go do it."

She clicked off again, waited a brief second and rang three for the dairy. After she had rung several times and got no answer, she murmured to herself:

"There's some one too busy on the ranch to be just hanging round after all, it seems."

And she went out to Jose and the waiting horse.

As she rode the five miles down to the office at the Lower End, her thoughts were constantly charged with an appreciation of the wonders which had been worked about her everywhere since that day, ten years ago, when she had first come with Luke Sanford to the original Blue Lake ranch. Then there had been only a wild cattle-range, ten thousand acres of brush, timber, and uncultivated open s.p.a.ces. Nowhere would one find rougher, wilder stock-land in California. But Luke Sanford had seen possibilities and had bought the whole ten thousand acres, counting, from the first sight of it, upon acquiring as soon as might be those other thousands of acres which now made Blue Lake ranch one of the biggest of Western ventures.

It was late May, and the afternoon air was sweet and warm with the pa.s.sing of spring. The girl's eager eyes travelled the length of the sky-seeking cliff almost at the back door of the ranch-house, which stood like some mighty barricade thrown up in that mythical day given over to the colossal struggle of a contending race of giants, and she found that there, alone, time had shown no change. Elsewhere, improvements at every turn were living monuments to the tireless brain of her father. Stock-corrals, st.u.r.dily built, out-houses spotless in their gleaming whitewash, monster barns, fenced-off fields, bridges across the narrow chasm of the frothing river, telephone-poles with their wires binding into one sheaf the numerous activities of the ranch, a broad, graded road over which she and her father had come here the last time together in the big touring-car.

Here the valley was only a mile across, shut in on both sides by cliff and steep, rocky mountain, walled by cliffs at the upper end, where the river from three-mile distant Blue Lake came down in flas.h.i.+ng waterfalls.

But, as she rode, the valley widened, changed in character. At first, wandering herds of beef-cattle, with now and then a riding cowboy turning in his saddle to wonder at her; then a gate to be opened as she stooped forward from her own saddle, and wide fields where the gra.s.s stood tall and untrodden and blooded Jersey cows looked up in mild interest; yonder a small pasture in which were five Guernseys, kept in religious seclusion, under ideal conditions, to further certain investigations into the ratios of five different kinds of fodder to the amount of b.u.t.ter-fat produced; across a green meadow a pure-blooded Jersey bull, whose mellow bellowings drew Judith's eyes to the clean line of his perfect back, over which, with pawing hoofs, he was throwing much trampled earth; in a more distant pen, accepting the trumpeted challenge and challenging back, a beautiful specimen of careful breeding in Ayrs.h.i.+re.

The road wound on, following generally the line of the river, which began a generous broadening, flowing more evenly through level fields.

Looking down the valley, Judith could see the whitewashed clump of buildings where were the second office, the store and the blacksmith's shop, the tiny cottages. And beyond, the barns, the dairy, the tall silos standing like lookout towers, the alfalfa-fields crisscrossed with irrigating ditches, and still farther on, the pasture-lands where the big herd of cows was grazing.

Here the valley was spread out until from side to side it measured something more than four miles. The bordering mountains, like the river, had grown into a softer mood; rolling hills scantily timbered, rich in gra.s.s, were dotted with herds, cattle and horses, or fenced off here and there, reserved for later pasturage.

Across the river, to the south, Judith marked the wandering calves, offspring of the herd; to the north, along the foothills, the subdued green of the olive-orchards.

"It's a big, big thing!" she whispered, and her eyes were very bright with it all, her cheeks flushed. "Big!"

Pa.s.sing one of the great barns, she heard the trumpet call of a stallion and, turning, saw in the corral one of those glorious brutes which Bud Lee had spoken of to Trevors as "clean spirit." From the instant her eyes filled to the ma.s.sive beauty of him, she knew who he was: Night Shade, sprung from the union of Mountain King and Black Empress; regal-blooded, ebon-black from silken fetlock to flowing mane; a splendid four-year-old destined to tread his proud way to a first prize at the coming State fair at Sacramento, a horse many stock-fanciers had coveted.

She stopped and marvelled afresh at him, paid him his due of unstinted admiration, and then spurred on to the little clump of buildings marking the lower ranch headquarters. At the store, where a ten-by-ten room was part.i.tioned off to serve as office, she swung down from the saddle and, leaving her horse with dragging reins, went in.

"h.e.l.lo, Charlie. You're still left to us, are you?" she said, as she stepped forward to shake hands with Miller, the storekeeper and general utility man of the settlement. "I'm glad to see you.

"So'm I, Miss Judy," grinned Charlie, looking the part. "Howdy."

"I wanted to see Johnson and Dennings. Are they here yet?"

"No," answered Miller. "Johnson, the ditch man, you mean? He's somewhere at the Upper End. Has got a crew of men up there making a new dam or somethin' or other. Been at it purty near a week, now, I guess. They camp up there."

"How many men are with him?" she asked quickly.

"About a dozen," and he looked hard at her. Judith frowned. But instead of saying what she might be thinking, she inquired where Dennings was.

"Out in the olive-orchards, I guess." He paused, filled a pipe he had neither desire nor intention of smoking, and said abruptly: "What's this I hear about Trevors? Canned him?"

"Yes."

"Um!" said Miller. "Well, Miss Judy, I ain't sayin' it wasn't purty near time he got the hooks. But, lemme tell you something. While you're riding around this afternoon, if I was you I'd pike over to the milking corrals."

She looked at him sharply.

"What is it, Charlie?"

"You just ride over," said Miller. "It ain't more'n a step an' I'll just shet up store an' mosey along after you."

Vaguely uneasy because of Charlie Miller's manner, Judith galloped down toward the four corrals where the cows were milked. From a distance she saw that there were a number of men, ten or twelve of them, standing in a close-packed group. She wondered what it was that had drawn them from their work at this time of day; what that big, bull-voiced man was saying to them. She heard the muttering rumble of his words before the words themselves meant anything to her. A quick glance over her shoulder showed her Charlie Miller hastening behind her, pick-handle in hand.

Her way carried her by a long, narrow building standing out like a great capital E, the cow hospital. She thought of Bill Crowdy and the sick calves as she drew near, but was pa.s.sing on to the men at the milk corrals, when the breeze, blowing lightly from the west, brought to her nostrils a whiff of sulphur.

A quick tide of red ran into her cheeks; that fool, Ed Masters, had not told Crowdy to refrain from the old-fas.h.i.+oned, deadly treatment!

Almost before her horse had set his four feet at the command of a quick touch upon the reins, the girl was down and hurrying into the middle door of the three, calling out as she went:

"Crowdy! Oh, Crowdy!"

She came into a small whitewashed room where were a table, two chairs, and a telephone; pa.s.sed through this into the calf-yard. Here were several compartments with doors which allowed of making them almost air-tight. And here she was met by a stronger smell of sulphur fumes.

"Crowdy!" she called again. "Where are you?"

Bill Crowdy, a heavy, squat figure of a man, s.h.i.+fty-eyed, with hard mouth and a nervous, restless air, came down a long hallway, smoking a cigarette. His eyes rested with no uncertain dislike upon Judith's eager face.