the Hash-Knife Outfit (1985) Page 20

  "Take thet--you darned--little Apache squaw," he panted, and he whacked away with his switch. Then he bent over Molly, who was convulsed on the pine-needle floor, and whispered in her ear, "Yell--scream!"

  Whereupon Molly obeyed! "Ah... Oh!... Ouu!"

  Stone paused for effectiveness, while he peeped through the screen. Gloriana knelt erect, her breast heaving, her eyes wildly magnificent. They were searching round for a weapon, Jed concluded.

  "Now--Molly Dunn--mebbe thet'll learn you not to monkey with Jed Stone... Come hyar, an' kiss me."

  He had to shake her to keep her remembering her part. Stone made smacking sounds with his lips, capital imitations of lusty kisses.

  "Oh--you crazy desperado!" burst out Molly, choking. "Jim Traft--will kill you--for this!"

  "Haw haw! Thet's funny... Now, you be good fer a minnit." Whereupon he picked her up and carried her, along with the wicked whip, out to the couch, where he dropped her like a sack of potatoes. Molly's face was a spectacle. It was wet and working. She hid it on the green spruce boughs and then she kicked like a furious colt. Her smothered imprecations sounded like: "Brute! Beast! Coyote! Skunk!"

  Stone had made a discovery. His keen sight caught Gloriana concealing the butcher knife, clutched in her hand and half-hidden in the folds of her dress. She, too, was a spectacle to behold, but beautiful and marvellous to him--her spirit so much greater than her strength.

  "Say, what're you goin' to do with thet knife?" demanded Stone.

  "You're no desperado! You're a dog," she cried. "If you lay hand on Molly again I--I'll kill you."

  Here indeed was a quick answer to the primitive instincts Stone and Molly had wished to rouse in the Eastern girl. Indeed, Stone thought she might develop too fast and spoil the game. Most assuredly she had to be intimidated. "You'd murder me--you white-faced panther?" he shouted, ferociously. "Drop thet knife!" And whipping out his gun he fired, apparently pointblank at her; but he knew the bullet would hit the bucket of water. The crash in the encompassing cabin walls was loud. Gloriana not only dropped the knife--she dropped herself. However, she did not quite faint. Stone lifted her up, with feelings vastly different from what he pretended, and then he made a show of collecting everything around which she might have used as a weapon.

  "Get back to work," he ordered.

  She weakly brushed back her amber hair, leaving a white blot of flour on it and her forehead, and then went at the biscuit dough again.

  "Say, darlin', did you wash them slim little paws of yourn?" asked Stone, suddenly.

  "No. I I never thought to," she faltered.

  "Wal, you wash them. There's the washpan... What're you tryin' to do--poison me with dirty hands? I'll have you know, Gloriana Traft, thet I'm a clean desperado, an' any woman who cooks fer me has gotta be spick an' span."

  Then Stone searched among the packs to find a short-handled shovel, with which he proposed to dig Croak Malloy's grave. The thing was monstrously impelling. Jed Stone digging Croak Malloy's grave! Arizona would learn that some day, and the range-riders would marvel as they talked about the campfires, adding bit by bit to the story of the doom of the Hash-Knife.

  The job done, he placed a huge rock at the foot of the grave, with the prophetic remark: "Shore some wag of a cowpuncher will plant a haidpiece."

  Whereupon Jed's active mind reverted to the issue in the cabin, and on the way back he picked up a good-size stone which he concealed under his coat. The light of blazing pine cones revealed the two girls working frantically to get supper for him. He caught the tail end of Molly's conversation: "an' no use lyin', Glory--I'm as scared as you."

  "0 Heaven! how false men are!" sighed Glory. "When this desperado came in I had a wild thought he was a hero."

  "Hey, don't talk aboot me," put in Stone. "I'm a sensitive man."

  Silence ensued then. The girls did not look up. And Stone, profiting by this, threw some sacks over the blood pools on the hard-packed clay floor. Also he surreptitiously laid the stone on the box seat where he intended to sit at the rickety old rough-hewn table. This he cleared by piling Malloy's trappings on the ground, and covering these with the cleanest piece of canvas he could find. Then he sat down to watch and wait. He realised he had fallen upon the most delicious situation of his life--if he had ever had one before--and he wanted to live every second of it to the full. Finally the girls put the supper on the table.

  "Thet's right, wait on me, Gloriana," he said. "An' you, Molly, set down an' eat... Gimme one of them turrible-lookin' biscuits... Ou! Hot!"

  He contrived to drop the biscuit and at the same instant push the heavy rock off the box seat. It fell with a solid thump. Gloriana actually jumped. Her eyes opened wide.

  "Golly! Did you heah thet biscuit hit?" ejaculated Stone, as if dumbfounded.

  "I heahed somethin' heavy," corroborated Molly, serious-faced, but her sweet red lips slightly twitched.

  "Say, gurl, air you aimin' to poison me?" demanded Stone, suspiciously. "What'n hell did you put in thet biscuit?"

  Gloriana stammered something, and then walking round the table she espied the rock, which, unfortunately, had fallen upon the biscuit.

  "It was a rock," she said, slowly.

  "Wal, dog-gone! So it was. Must have been on the box. I shore didn't see it... I offer my humble apologies, Miss Traft."

  No doubt Gloriana's mind was so steeped in fright that it could not function normally, yet she gazed with dubious tragic eyes at the desperado.

  "Wal," he drawled, when he could eat no more, as he transfixed Gloriana with eyes he tried to make devouring, "if you can love as well as cook, I'm shore a lucky desperado... Get out now and I'll wash up. No sweethearts of mine ever had to do the dirty work round my camp."

  While he was noisily banging pans, cups, and other utensils around his trained ear caught Gloriana's whisper, "Now--let's run!"

  "An' get lost in the woods--for bears to eat!" whispered Molly.

  Stone dried the camp utensils and placed them on the shelf, after which he washed his hands, in hot water.

  "Put some wood on the fire," he said, filling his black pipe. "Pass me a red coal on a chip... Thet's it, darlin'; you're shore learnin' fast."

  "Spread some blankets on the bed there," he said, pointing to the pack he had opened. While this order was being complied with he puffed his pipe, and opened his big hands to the fire with an air of content. Molly's reproachful glance might have been lost upon him. Jed reasoned it out that the little Cibeque girl had lived too long among Western men to trust him wholly. That gave Stone more thrills. He would fool Molly, too. At length he got up to view the bed.

  "Kinds narrow fer three to sleep comfortable," he said, laconically. "I always wear my boots an' spurs to bed--in case I have to hurry to a hoss--an' I kick when I have nightmare. But I reckon there's room fer two. Now, Molly, you an' Gloriana draw lots to see who'll sleep fust night with me."

  "Jed Stone, I'll see you in hell before I'd do it," cried Molly, passionately. "You'll have to tie me, hand an' foot."

  "Wal, you needn't take my head off. I kinda lean to Glory, anyhow."

  Gloriana gazed at him with eyes full of a sickening horror and desperate defiance.

  "You'll have to kill me--you monster!" she said, hoarsely.

  "Wal, both buckin' on me, huh," replied Stone, as if resigned to the nature of women. "All right, I don't want no tied gurl sleepin' with me, an' shore no daid one. So I'll pass. You can sleep together, an' I'll be a gentleman an' go outdoors."

  Stone picked up one of the bed rolls, and carrying it out back through the open side of the cabin he unrolled it in the gloom of the cliff and stretched himself as if he never meant to move again. He could see the flicker of the firelight on one wall of the cabin, but the girls were out of his sight. He heard their low voices for what seemed a long time.

  Chapter NINETEEN

  Jed Stone awoke with the first pink streak of dawn flushing the sky. The old sombre distrust of the new day had departed. He s
eemed young again.

  Going to the door of the cabin, he called: "Hey, babes in the woods! Roll out an' rustle."

  He heard a gasp, and then a low moan, but he did not look in. He went out to fetch the horses. There had been nine in the canyon the night before; now he could see but six, including his own. One was a pretty pinto mare which he selected for Gloriana, with a chuckle at the thought of how all her life she would remember this ride. He drove four horses in, haltered them, and chose the best saddles for the girls, the stirrups of which he shortened to fit them. It tickled him to see the blue smoke curling up from the cabin, and a little later his keen nostrils took note of the fragrance of coffee.

  Presently he repaired to the cabin.

  "Mawnin', gurls," he bawled, stalking in.

  Gloriana had been listlessly brushing her lustrous hair, while Molly attended to the breakfast chores.

  "Ha, makin' yourself look pretty," remarked Stone. "Wal, we can't bamboozle the boss of the Hash-Knife. An' you ought to be ashamed--lettin' Molly do all the work."

  "I started the fire and made the biscuits," she retorted. Stone had grasped before that she seemed peculiarly susceptible to criticism, and decided he would work on her sensitiveness to the limit.

  "Wal, you can't pack much of this outfit," observed Stone. "You gurls pick out what belongs to you."

  Molly designated two duffle-bags and one small grip. Stone carried them outside. Then returning, he rolled some blankets. He remembered that he had some hard bread and dried meat in his saddle-bags, which supply he would add to without letting the girls know. His plan precluded an insufficiency of food on this three-day ride down to Yellow Jacket. When he had packed the horse Molly called from the cabin, "Come an' get it!"

  "You come hyar yourself an' get some-thin'," he replied.

  Molly came runnin', anxious and big-eyed. "What--Jed?"

  "Pitch in now, an' show this Eastern gull what a Western lass is made of. Savvy?"

  "I reckon."

  "I'm givin' you the chance, Molly. Don't fall down. Take everythin' as a matter of course. Help her, shore, but give her a little dig now an' then."

  "Jed, you're a devil," returned Molly, slowly, and turned away.

  The breakfast was even more tasteful than had been the supper the night before. Stone ate with the appetite of an Indian, and the wisdom of a range-rider who had to go far.

  "Gulls, I've gotta hurry, so can't pack much grub," said. Stone, rising to gather up a few utensils, some coffee and meat, and what biscuits had been left.

  Presently the girls appeared. Molly had taken the precaution to don a riding-skirt and boots, but Gloriana wore the thin dress which Malloy had torn considerably.

  "Where's your hat?" asked Stone.

  "It blew off, yesterday... I I forgot to look in my bag--and change. If you'll give me time--"

  "Nope. Sorry, Gloriana. Didn't I tell you I was a hunted man? You'll have to ride as you are. Strikes me the Lord made you wonderful to look at, but left out any brains. You'll do fine in Arizona... Here, wear Croak's sombrero... Haw haw! If your ma could see you now!"

  She had to be helped up on the pinto, which promptly bucked her off upon the soft sward. What injury she suffered was to her vanity. She threw off the sombrero, but Stone jammed it back on her head.

  "Can't you ride?" inquired Stone, gazing down upon her.

  "Do you think I was born in a stable?" she asked, bitterly.

  "Wal, it'd be a darn sight better if you was. An' far as thet is concerned the Lord was born in a stall, so I've heerd. So it ain't no disgrace... I'm curious to know why you ever come to Arizona?"

  "I was a fool."

  "Wal, get up an' try again. This little mare isn't bad. She was jest playin'. But don't let her see you're afraid. An' don't kick her in the ribs, like you did when you got up fust."

  "I--I can't ride this way," she said, scarlet of face.

  "Wal, you are a holy show, by golly!" observed Stone. "I never seen so much of a pretty gurl. You shore wouldn't win no rodeo prizes fer modesty."

  "Molly, I can't go on," cried Gloriana, almost weeping. "My skirt's up round my neck!"

  "Glory, I don't see what else you can do. You'll have to ride," replied Molly.

  "Thet's talkin'. Glory, you'll get some idee of the difference between a no-good tenderfoot from the East an' a healthy Western cowgurl... Now, you follow me, an' keep up, or there'll be hell to pay."

  The ease with which Molly mounted her horse, a wicked, black animal, was not lost upon Gloriana, nor the way she controlled him.

  "Molly, you better lead this pack-horse. I'll have to keep my eye on our cultured lady-friend hyar," drawled Stone, and he started off. At the gateway of the canyon, where a rough trail headed up toward the rim, he turned to caution Gloriana, "Hang on to her mane."

  When they reached the top he had satisfaction in the expression of that young woman's face. Stone then struck out along the rim, and he did not need to pick out a rough way. The trail was one seldom used, and then only by riders who preferred to keep to the wilder going. It led through thickets of scrub oak, manzanita and dwarf pine, with a generous sprinkling of cactus. To drag Gloriana Traft through them was nothing short of cruelty. Stone kept an eye on her, though he appeared never to turn his head, never to hear her gasps and cries. Molly, who came last, often extricated her from some tangle.

  Stone, from long habit, was a silent and swift traveller, and did not vary his custom now. But he had to stop more often to let the girls catch up. The condition of Gloriana's dress--what was left of it--seemed satisfactory to the outlaw. Before Gloriana Traft got through this ride she would give all her possessions for a pair of blue jeans.

  About the middle of the morning Jed came out on the high point of the Diamond Mesa. And he halted. The girls came up, to gaze out and down.

  "Oh-h!" cried Miss Traft, her voice broken, yet deep and rich with feeling. She did not disappoint Stone here.

  "The Tonto!" screamed Molly, suddenly beside herself. "Jed, why didn't you tell me you were comin' heah?... Oh, Glory, look--look! It's my home."

  "Home!" echoed Gloriana, incredulously.

  "Yes, Home!... An', oh, how I love it! See thet thin line, with the white? Thet's the Cibeque windin' away down through the valley. See the big turn. Now look, Glory. There's a bare spot in the green. An' a grey dot in the middle. Thet's my home. Thet's my cabin. Where I was born."

  "I see. But I can hardly believe," replied Gloriana. "That tiny pin-point in all the endless green?"

  "Shore is, Glory. You're standin' on the high rim of the Diamond, a mile above the valley. But it looks close. You should see from down there. All my life I've looked up at this point. It was the Rim. But I was never heah before... Oh, look, look, Glory, so you will never forget!"

  The Eastern girl gazed silently, with eyes that seemed to reflect something of the grandeur of the scene. Stone turned away from her, glad in his heart that somehow she had satisfied him. Then he had a moment for himself--to gaze once more and the last time over the Tonto.

  "Molly, don't forget to show Gloriana some other places," said Stone, with a laugh. "There's West Fork, a village I used to ride through an' see you at Summer's store. An' buy you a stick of candy... Not for years now... An' never again... There's Bear Flat an' Green Valley. An' Haverly's Ranch, an' Gordon Canyon. An' see, far to the east, thet bare yellow patch. Thet's Pleasant Valley, where they had the sheep an' cattle war which ruined your dad, though he was only a sympathiser, Molly. I reckon you never knew. Wal, it's true... Miss Traft, you're shore the furst Eastern gurl ever to see the Tonto."

  Though they wanted to linger, Stone ordered them on. Momentarily he had forgotten his role of slave-driver. But Gloriana had been too engrossed in her own sensations to notice his lapse.

  When Stone crossed the drift fence, which along here had been cut by the Hash-Knife, he halted to show the girls.

  "Traft's drift fence. Gloriana, this is what the old man saddled on your brother Jim.
There's nine miles of fence down, which Jim an' his uncle can thank Croak Malloy fer. But I will say the buildin' of this fence was a big thing. Old Jim has vision. Shore I'm a cattle thief, an' the fence didn't make no difference to me. I reckon it was a help to rustlers. But Malloy hated fences... Wal, it'll be a comfort to Traft an' all honest ranchers to learn he's dead."

  "Jed Stone, you--you seem to be two men!" exclaimed Gloriana.

  "Shore. I'm more'n thet. An' I reckon one of them is some kin to human. But don't gamble on him, my lovely tenderfoot. He's got no say in my make-up."

  Molly Dunn lagged behind, most intensely interested in that drift fence, the building of which had made her lover, young Traft, a marked man on the range, and which had already caused a good deal of blood-spilling. Stone had to halloa to her, and wait.

  "What's ailin' you, gurl?" he queried, derisively. "Thet fence make you lovesick fer Jim? Wal, I reckon you won't see him again very soon, if ever... Get off an' straighten thet pack."

  While Molly heaved and pulled to get the pack level on the pack-saddle again, Stone rolled a cigarette and watched Gloriana. Her amaze at Molly Dunn amused him.

  "Wal, Glory, she used to pack grub an' grain from West Fork on a burro, when both of them wasn't any bigger'n jack-rabbits."

  "There's a lot I don't know," observed Gloriana, thoughtfully, as for the hundredth time she tried to pull her torn skirt down to hide her bare legs.

  "Shore," agreed the outlaw. "An' when a fellar finds thet out there's hope fer him."

  The rest of that day he rode through a maze of wild country, at sunset ending up on a weathered slope where he had to get off and walk.

  "Hey, there!" he called back. "Fall off an' walk. If your hoss slides, get out of his way. An' step lively so you won't go down in one of these avalanches."

  All of which would have given a cowboy something to do. Molly had to stop often to rescue her friend, and more than once a scream rent the air. But at length they got across and down this long slant of loose shale, and entered a grassy wooded flat where water ran. Here Stone halted to make camp.