THE TRAIL OF CONFLICT by EMILIE BAKER LORING (classic fiction .txt) 📕

You're too innocent to be true," with a little rush of laughter. "Now I ask you, would you want a wife who was as distantly friendly to you as Jerry is to Steve?"

"I should not," with convincing emphasis. "But why should your sister have married Courtlandt if she didn't love him? I can't conceive of his not being mad about her."

"Dad was the why. I didn't know until I asked him if I might come here. I went to San Francisco with my roommate when school closed, but I intended to come to Jerry as quickly as I politely could. When he gave me permission to come Dad told me that he expected me to marry family as Jerry had--that he had brought her up with the idea and that she had not disappointed him. That's that!"

"In the vernacular of the backwoods, 'She seen her duty an' she done it,'" interpolated Benson. "Might--might an humble admirer ask if you are planning to please your father or--or yourself, when you marry?" He succeeded in keeping eyes and tone gayly impersonal.

"I don't intend to marry at all, that is, not for years and years and years."

"You'll be quite a nice old lady by that time, won't you?"

"You're not nearly as good-looking when you scowl, Tommy. As I was saying, when so rudely interrupted, when I do marry it will be to please myself. I told Dad a thing or two," and Tommy, observing the tiny flames which memory had set in her hazel eyes, allowed that she had.

"I'm puzzled about Jerry's money," Peggy went on thoughtfully. "Dad gives us an allowance fit for princesses of blood royal; that's an out-of-date simile now, isn't it? When I asked her this morning for five dollars with which to tip the man who brought up my trunk, first she was shocked at the idea of tipping one of the outfit, and then she grew as red as fire and stammered that she had no small bills. Ye gods, what do you know about that?" with slangy amazement.

"Sweet cookie, that's nothing. Many a time I haven't been able to pry a dollar bill loose."

"That is different. You're--you're working and it takes time to make a living," with sweet earnestness. Tommy shot a quick look at her. Was she laughing at him? No, she was taking his lack of funds seriously. "About that Alexandrite ring. Once Jerry would have ordered it by wire before you could say 'Jack Robinson'--but all she said was, 'I--I'm not buying jewels now, Peg.' Has she turned miser or has Dad----" her eyes flew to Benson's in startled questioning. "Dad was furious because Jerry and Steve left New York. Could he have stopped her allowance? But--but if he did--surely Steve would give----" she stopped in troubled uncertainty.

"Why don't you ask your sister?" suggested Benson gravely.

"I will. I can't believe that Dad would--well he'd better never try to drive me. And that's that," with a defiant tilt of her chin.

"Would you stick to--to a man, a poor man, you loved even if you knew that your father would cut you off with the proverbial shilling?" Her hazel eyes met his turbulent blue ones frankly.

"Indeed I would, Mr. Tommy Benson. I shouldn't be afraid to marry a poor man, that is, a poor man with a future. I should want to be sure that he was that kind. I love to cook and sew and I should adore taking care of a ducky little house and brushing my husband's coat collar when he started off for work in the morning and going to market. There is only one thing I should hate to economize about----" her expression and tone were introspective. Benson was conscious that his heart was in his eyes but he didn't care. She was adorable with that thoughtful pucker of her vivid lips. He had to steady his voice before he asked lightly:

"And what may that one thing be, Peg-o'-my-heart?"

"Children," she answered promptly and with utter absence of self-consciousness. "I want eight and--and I suppose that's rather extravagant for a poor man to start with, don't you, Tommy?"

Benson held his emotions in a grip of steel. At that moment the boy-he-had-been waved good-bye and slipped away forever. The man's eyes were gravely tender as he answered the girl's question with judicial deliberation.

"Perhaps--not. That is, not for a poor man with a future." He tightened on the bridle. "Steve will think we're quitters. Let's go!"

The white road stretched ahead of them. Their horses' feet raised a haze of dust. On either side billowed fields of tall, untrodden grass and beyond the fields lumped the foot-hills. In a pasture a roan mare lay with her head up over her shoulder asleep, while beside her, flat on its side in the sun, dozed a young colt. Insects droned and buzzed unceasingly. The air sparkled with that brand of ozone to be found only among the foot-hills.

Benson and Peggy came upon Courtlandt in Lower Field. He nodded to them absent-mindedly. He was the centre of a group of mounted men, all eager, all armed. Most of them rolled and smoked cigarettes incessantly as they sat their horses. A few of them wore chaps with vests over their colored shirts, some were in khaki riding clothes, all wore bandanas of violent pattern in place of collars, broad-brimmed Stetsons and laced riding boots. They were a clean-cut, self-respecting looking lot, as lean, lithe and brown as a life spent in the saddle could make them. Pete Gerrish on his massive sorrel loomed above them all.

"Understand me, there is to be no shooting," Steve was reiterating as Peg and Benson rode up. "Gerrish, I'll fire the man who shoots unless in self-defense. Do you get me, boys?"

"Sure, we get you," drawled Marcelle O'Neil, so nicknamed because of the unrepressible kink in his straw-colored hair. "No objection, be ther', to ropin' one of Ranlett's gang an' reinin' him up short if he starts to lope?" he wheedled.

"No. Bring every one of them back if you can. Without injury, though. We'll let the law mete out punishment."

"Sure, it's none of my butt-in how you handle the durn polecat, but if I had my way I'd swing Ranlett up to a cottonwood if I got my mazuma fer doin' it. Them were the finest Shorthorns in the world and if Nick-the-time-feeder was back----"

Nicholas Fairfax had been notoriously prompt to discharge a man who slacked on the job, but O'Neil had not intended to let the bunk-house name for the late owner of the Double O slip out. He looked furtively at Courtlandt but he, consciously or unconsciously, ignored the lapse.

"We'll find them, O'Neil. We must. Get a move on, boys. Ride in pairs and ride like----"

Their whoop of enthusiasm drowned his last words. Steve remained motionless until the last one had taken the fence at a jump. His face was white, his eyes strained and tired. He rode toward Peg and Benson who had with difficulty restrained their horses from following the riders.

"That was the nearest approach to the wild-west cowboy of the eighties that you will ever see, Peg-o'-my-heart. Did you notice that Marks and Schoeffleur were missing, Tommy? Why didn't Jerry come with you, Peg?"

"She said that she had work to do, that she would ride after luncheon."

"She understood that she was not to go out of sight of the ranch-house?"

The girl's salaam was as profound as the neck of her horse would permit.

"Your slave heard and obeys, oh Abdul the Great."

A laugh erased the tired lines about Courtlandt's mouth.

"Do I seem such a tyrannous old Turk to you? Well, it is only because I am afraid that Jerry----" He left his sentence unfinished and turned to Benson. "Take a message to Upper Farm for me. Tell--the Devil!"

"Your mistake, Steve; it's only Mrs. Denbigh," Peggy corrected mischievously as she followed Courtlandt's eyes to where Felice Denbigh and Greyson were entering the field. The three rode to meet the newcomers.

"Good morning. I didn't know that you left your downy before noon, Felice."

The woman put her horse through a few paces that were as coquettish as her eyes and voice.

"On with the vamps!" muttered Tommy in a tone intended only for Peg's ear. With difficulty she choked back a delighted giggle as Felice answered in a spoiled-child voice:

"Steve, you're getting to be a barbarian out here. Have you forgotten that last night you invited me to ride with you this morning?"

"Last night--I what?" demanded Courtlandt, a slow color darkening his face.

"I waited for you at the X Y Z and when you didn't come fairly browbeat my host into escorting me to Double O ranch. I thought I should find you there. No such luck. We saw only Mrs. Courtlandt and she thought that you would be too busy----"

"I am too busy," curtly. "Tommy, take Mrs. Denbigh with you and Peg to Upper Farm. You'll find the most up-to-date dairy in the country there, Felice. Its equipment cost----"

"Don't talk like a mail-order catalogue, Steve," the woman interrupted petulantly. "If you can't show me the Upper Farm I will wait until you can, I'm a patient waiter. I always get what I want," with narrowed eyes and an iced smile which sent a queer shiver down Benson's spine. He looked at Greyson to see how he was bearing his equivocal position. The man's fine, thoroughbred face was red and set about the lips. Benson couldn't understand his allowing himself to be placed in such an awkward situation. Why the dickens had he invited the Denbigh woman to the X Y Z? He must have been at the Manor long enough during Old Nick's illness to have found her out. He brought his thoughts back to the present in time to hear Felice say:

"Shall we go on to Slippy Bend, Mr. Greyson? Your sister gave us some commissions to execute there. So long, Stevie! You'll come over for a game of auction to-night, of course. You and I against mine host and Paula." She didn't wait for his answer. Without a glance in the direction of Peg and Benson she wheeled her horse and rode away. Greyson waved his hat to Peg, called something to her companions and cantered after his guest. For one long, silent moment Courtlandt followed the two with his eyes, then he resumed his directions to Benson where he had dropped them.

"Tell Mrs. Simms to have Simms report to me to-morrow noon at the ranch. Show Peg over Upper Farm. She won't insist upon being personally conducted by me, I'll wager. Get your lunch there. Mrs. Simms' jelly cookies will make you purr with repletion, Peggy. I told Ming Soy that we wouldn't be back till late afternoon. Take your time. Don't let Peg ride too hard. Jerry won't be anxious. She knows what distances are here."

"But, Steve, don't you need me? I can take Miss Glamorgan back and join you."

"No, I'm riding alone. I have a few fairly fresh trails to follow up. Be a good child, Peg-o'-my-heart, and do exactly what the best range-rider on the Double O tells you to do." He laughed at her indignant eyes, touched Blue Devil with his heel and loped off. Peggy looked after him and then at Benson.

"I wonder--I don't like that Denbigh woman. Did you see her eyes when Steve turned her down? Careful Cosmetics is the name for her. She must think it's the open season for vamps round here." She looked at Tommy with laughter and a glint of mischief in her hazel eyes. "Now I wonder who Steve could have meant by the best range-rider of the Double O?" she mused in a low voice as though communing with herself.

Benson swept off his Stetson with swash-buckling impressiveness.

"I don't like to talk about myself--but," he murmured with exaggerated humility, "I'll say that I--now who the dickens is that? The Simms kid. Johnny Simms. What does he want? I----" His voice trailed off into silence as he watched