A TEST OF LOYALTY
Lambert rode to his rendezvous with
Grace Kerr on the appointed day, believing that she
would keep it, although her promise had been inconclusive.
She had only “expected” she would be there,
but he more than expected she would come.
He was in a pleasant mood that morning,
sentimentally softened to such extent that he believed
he might even call accounts off with Sim Hargus and
the rest of them if Grace could arrange a peace.
Vesta was a little rough on her, he believed.
Grace was showing a spirit that seemed to prove she
wanted only gentle guiding to abandon the practices
of violence to which she had been bred.
Certainly, compared to Vesta, she
seemed of coarser ware, even though she was as handsome
as heart could desire. This he admitted without
prejudice, not being yet wholly blind. But there
was no bond of romance between Vesta and him.
There was no place for romance between a man and his
boss. Romance bound him to Grace Kerr; sentiment
enchained him. It was a sweet enslavement, and
one to be prolonged in his desire.
Grace was not in sight when he reached
their meeting-place. He let down the wire and
rode to meet her, troubled as before by that feeling
of disloyalty to the Philbrook interests which caused
him to stop more than once and debate whether he should
turn back and wait inside the fence.
The desire to hasten the meeting with
Grace was stronger than this question of his loyalty.
He went on, over the hill from which she used to spy
on his passing, into the valley where he had interfered
between the two girls on the day that he found Grace
hidden away in this unexpected place. There he
met her coming down the farther slope.
Grace was quite a different figure
that day from any she had presented before, wearing
a perky little highland bonnet with an eagle feather
in it, and a skirt and blouse of the same plaid.
His eyes announced his approval as they met, leaning
to shake hands from the saddle.
Immediately he brought himself to
task for his late admission that she was inferior
in the eyes to Vesta. That misappraisement was
due to the disadvantage under which he had seen Grace
heretofore. This morning she was as dainty as
a fresh-blown pink, and as delicately sweet. He
swung from the saddle and stood off admiring her with
so much speaking from his eyes that she grew rosy
in their fire.
“Will you get down, Grace?
I’ve never had a chance to see how tall you
are I couldn’t tell that day on the
train.”
The eagle feather came even with his
ear when she stood beside him, slender and strong,
health in her eyes, her womanhood ripening in her
lips. Not as tall as Vesta, not as full of figure,
he began in mental measurement, burning with self-reproof
when he caught himself at it. Why should he always
be drawing comparisons between her and Vesta, to her
disadvantage in all things? It was unwarranted,
it was absurd!
They sat on the hillside, their horses
nipping each other in introductory preliminaries,
then settling down to immediate friendship. They
were far beyond sight of the fence. Lambert hoped,
with an uneasy return of that feeling of disloyalty
and guilt, that Vesta would not come riding up that
way and find the open strands of wire.
This thought passed away and troubled
him no more as they sat talking of the strange way
of their “meeting on the run,” as she said.
“There isn’t a horse in
a thousand that could have caught up with me that
day.”
“Not one in thousands,”
he amended, with due gratitude to Whetstone.
“I expected you’d be riding him today,
Duke.”
“He backed into a fire,”
said he uneasily, “and burned off most of his
tail. He’s no sight for a lady in his present
shape.”
She laughed, looking at him shrewdly,
as if she believed it to be a joke to cover something
that he didn’t want her to know.
“But you promised to give him
to me, Duke, when he rested up a little.”
“I will,” he declared
earnestly, getting hold of her hand where it lay in
the grass between them. “I’ll give
you anything I’ve got, Grace, from the breath
in my body to the blood in my heart!”
She bent her head, her face rosy with her mounting
blood.
“Would you, Duke?” said
she, so softly that it was not much more than the
flutter of the wings of words.
He leaned a little nearer, his heart
climbing, as if it meant to smother him and cut him
short in that crowning moment of his dream.
“I’d have gone to the
end of the world to find you, Grace,” he said,
his voice shaking as if he had a chill, his hands
cold, his face hot, a tingling in his body, a sound
in his ears like bells. “I want to tell
you how ”
“Wait, Duke I want
to hear it all but wait a minute. There’s
something I want to ask you to do for me. Will
you do me a favor, Duke, a simple favor, but one that
means the world and all to me?”
“Try me,” said he, with boundless confidence.
“It’s more than giving
me your horse, Duke; a whole lot more than that, but
it’ll not hurt you you can do it,
if you will.”
“I know you wouldn’t ask
me to do anything that would reflect on my honesty
or honor,” he said, beginning to do a little
thinking as his nervous chill passed.
“A man doesn’t when
a man cares ” She stopped,
looking away, a little constriction in her throat.
“What is it, Grace?” pressing
her hand encouragingly, master of the situation now,
as he believed.
“Duke” she
turned to him suddenly, her eyes wide and luminous,
her heart going so he could see the tremor of its
vibrations in the lace at her throat “I
want you to lend me tomorrow morning, for one day,
just one day, Duke five hundred head of
Vesta Philbrook’s cattle.”
“That’s a funny thing to ask, Grace,”
said he uneasily.
“I want you to meet me over
there where I cut the fence before sunup in the morning,
and have everybody out of the way, so we can cut them
out and drive them over here. You can manage
it, if you want to, Duke. You will, if you if
you care.”
“If they were my cattle, Grace,
I wouldn’t hesitate a second.”
“You’ll do it, anyhow, won’t you,
Duke, for me?”
“What in the world do you want them for, just
for one day?”
“I can’t explain that
to you now, Duke, but I pledge you my honor, I pledge
you everything, that they’ll be returned to you
before night, not a head missing, nothing wrong.”
“Does your father know does he ”
“It’s for myself that
I’m asking this of you, Duke; nobody else.
It means it means everything
to me.”
“If they were my cattle, Grace,
if they were my cattle,” said he aimlessly,
amazed by the request, groping for the answer that
lay behind it. What could a girl want to borrow
five hundred head of cattle for? What in the
world would she get out of holding them in her possession
one day and then turning them back into the pasture?
There was something back of it; she was the innocent
emissary of a crafty hand that had a trick to play.
“We could run them over here,
just you and I, and nobody would know anything about
it,” she tempted, the color back in her cheeks,
her eyes bright as in the pleasure of a request already
granted.
“I don’t like to refuse you even that,
Grace.”
“You’ll do it, you’ll
do it, Duke?” Her hand was on his arm in beguiling
caress, her eyes were pleading into his.
“I’m afraid not, Grace.”
Perhaps she felt a shading of coldness
in his denial, for distrust and suspicion were rising
in his cautious mind. It did not seem to him a
thing that could be asked with any honest purpose,
but for what dishonest one he had no conjecture to
fit.
“Are you going to turn me down
on the first request I ever made of you, Duke?”
She watched him keenly as she spoke, making her eyes
small, an inflection of sorrowful injury in her tone.
“If there’s anything of
my own you want, if there’s anything you can
name for me to do, personally, all you’ve got
to do is hint at it once.”
“It’s easy to say that
when there’s nothing else I want!” she
said, snapping it at him as sharp as the crack of
a little whip.
“If there was anything ”
“There’ll never be anything!”
She got up, flashing him an indignant
look. He stood beside her, despising the poverty
of his condition which would not allow him to deliver
over to her, out of hand, the small matter of five
hundred beeves.
She went to her horse, mightily put
out and impatient with him, as he could see, threw
the reins over her pommel, as if she intended to leave
him at once. She delayed mounting, suddenly putting
out her hands in supplication, tears springing in
her eyes.
“Oh, Duke! If you knew
how much it means to me,” she said.
“Why don’t you tell me, Grace?”
“Even if you stayed back there
on the hills somewhere and watched them you wouldn’t
do it, Duke?” she appealed, evading his request.
He shook his head slowly, while the
thoughts within it ran like wildfire, seeking the
thing that she covered.
“It can’t be done.”
“I give you my word, Duke, that
if you’ll do it nobody will ever lift a hand
against this ranch again.”
“It’s almost worth it,” said he.
She quickened at this, enlarging her guarantee.
“We’ll drop all of the
old feud and let Vesta alone. I give you my word
for all of them, and I’ll see that they carry
it out. You can do Vesta as big a favor as you’ll
be doing me, Duke.”
“It couldn’t be done without
her consent, Grace. If you want to go to her
with this same proposal, putting it plainly like you
have to me, I think she’ll let you have the
cattle, if you can show her any good reason for it.”
“Just as if I’d be fool enough to ask
her!”
“That’s the only way.”
“Duke,” said she coaxingly,
“wouldn’t it be worth something to you,
personally, to have your troubles settled without a
fight? I’ll promise you nobody will ever
lift a hand against you again if you’ll do this
for me.”
He started, looked at her sternly, approaching her
a step.
“What do you know about anything that’s
happened to me?” he demanded.
“I don’t know anything
about what’s happened, but I know what’s
due to happen if it isn’t headed off.”
Lambert did some hard thinking for
a little while, so hard that it wrenched him to the
marrow. If he had had suspicion of her entire
innocence in the solicitation of this unusual favor
before, it had sprung in a moment into distrust.
Such a quick reversion cannot take place in the sentiment
without a shock. It seemed to Lambert that something
valuable had been snatched away from him, and that
he stood in bewilderment, unable to reach out and
retrieve his loss.
“Then there’s no use in
discussing it any more,” he said, groping back,
trying to answer her.
“You’d do it for her!”
“Not for her any quicker than for you.”
“I know it looks crooked to
you, Duke I don’t blame you for your
suspicions,” she said with a frankness that seemed
more like herself, he thought. She even seemed
to be coming back to him in that approach. It
made him glad.
“Tell me all about it, Grace,” he urged.
She came close to him, put her arm
about his neck, drew his head down as if to whisper
her confidence in his ear. Her breath was on his
cheek, his heart was afire in one foolish leap.
She put up her lips as if to kiss him, and he, reeling
in the ecstasy of his proximity to her radiant body,
bent nearer to take what she seemed to offer.
She drew back, her hand interposed
before his eager lips, shaking her head, denying him
prettily.
“In the morning, I’ll
tell you all in the morning when I meet you to drive
the cattle over,” she said. “Don’t
say a word I’ll not take no for my
answer.” She turned quickly to her horse
and swung lightly into the saddle. From this
perch she leaned toward him, her hand on his shoulder,
her lips drawing him in their fiery lure again.
“In the morning in the morning you
can kiss me, Duke!”
With that word, that promise, she
turned and galloped away.
It was late afternoon, and Lambert
had faced back toward the ranchhouse, troubled by
all that he could not understand in that morning’s
meeting, thrilled and fired by all that was sweet
to remember, when he met a man who came riding in
the haste of one who had business ahead of him that
could not wait. He was riding one of Vesta Philbrook’s
horses, a circumstance that sharpened Lambert’s
interest in him at once.
As they closed the distance between
them, Lambert keeping his hand in the easy neighborhood
of his gun, the man raised his hand, palm forward,
in the Indian sign of peace. Lambert saw that
he wore a shoulder holster which supported two heavy
revolvers. He was a solemn-looking man with a
narrow face, a mustache that crowded Taterleg’s
for the championship, a buckskin vest with pearl buttons.
His coat was tied on the saddle at his back.
“I didn’t steal this horse,”
he explained with a sorrowful grin as he drew up within
arm’s length of Lambert, “I requisitioned
it. I’m the sheriff.”
“Yes, sir?” said Lambert,
not quite taking him for granted, no intention of
letting him pass on with that explanation.
“Miss Philbrook said I’d run across you
up this way.”
The officer produced his badge, his
commission, his card, his letterhead, his credentials
of undoubted strength. On the proof thus supplied,
Lambert shook hands with him.
“I guess everybody else in the
county knows me this is my second term,
and I never was taken for a horse thief before,”
the sheriff said, solemn as a crow, as he put his
papers away.
“I’m a stranger in this
country, I don’t know anybody, nobody knows me,
so you’ll not take it as a slight that I didn’t
recognize you, Mr. Sheriff.”
“No harm done, Duke, no harm
done. Well, I guess you’re a little wider
known than you make out. I didn’t bring
a man along with me because I knew you were up here
at Philbrook’s. Hold up your hand and be
sworn.”
“What’s the occasion?”
Lambert inquired, making no move to comply with the
order.
“I’ve got a warrant for
this man Kerr over south of here, and I want you to
go with me. Kerr’s a bad egg, in a nest
of bad eggs. There’s likely to be too much
trouble for one man to handle alone. You do solemnly
swear to support the constitution of the ”
“Wait a minute, Mr. Sheriff,”
Lambert demurred; “I don’t know that I
want to mix up in ”
“It’s not for you to say
what you want to do that’s my business,”
the sheriff said sharply. He forthwith deputized
Lambert, and gave him a duplicate of the warrant.
“You don’t need it, but it’ll clear
your mind of all doubt of your power,” he explained.
“Can we get through this fence?”
“Up here six or seven miles,
about opposite Kerr’s place. But I’d
like to go on to the house and change horses; I’ve
rode this one over forty miles today already.”
The sheriff agreed. “Where’s
that outlaw you won from Jim Wilder?” he inquired,
turning his eyes on Lambert in friendly appreciation.
“I’ll ride him,”
Lambert returned briefly. “What’s
Kerr been up to?”
“Mortgaged a bunch of cattle
he’s got over there to three different banks.
He was down a couple of days ago tryin’ to put
through another loan. The investigation that
banker started laid him bare. He promised Kerr
to come up tomorrow and look over his security, and
passed the word on to the county attorney. Kerr
said he’d just bought five hundred head of stock.
He wanted to raise the loan on them.”
“Five hundred,” said Lambert,
mechanically repeating the sheriff’s words,
doing some calculating of his own.
“He ain’t got any that
ain’t blanketed with mortgage paper so thick
already they’d go through a blizzard and never
know it. His scheme was to raise five or six
thousand dollars more on that outfit and skip the
country.”
And Grace Kerr had relied on his infatuation
for her to work on him for the loan of the necessary
cattle. Lambert could not believe that it was
all her scheme, but it seemed incredible that a man
as shrewdly dishonest as Kerr would entertain a plan
that promised so little outlook of success. They
must have believed over at Kerr’s that they had
him pretty well on the line.
But Kerr had figured too surely on
having his neighbor’s cattle to show the banker
to stake all on the chance of Grace being able to wheedle
him into the scheme. If he couldn’t get
them by seduction, he meant to take them in a raid.
Grace never intended to come to meet him in the morning
alone.
One crime more would amount to little
in addition to what Kerr had done already, and it
would be a trick on which he would pride himself and
laugh over all the rest of his life. It seemed
certain now that Grace’s friendliness all along
had been laid on a false pretense, with the one intention
of beguiling him to his disgrace, his destruction,
if disgrace could not be accomplished without it.
As he rode Whetstone now
quite recovered from his scorching, save for the hair
of his once fine tail beside the sheriff,
Lambert had some uneasy cogitations on his sentimental
blindness of the past; on the good, honest advice
that Vesta Philbrook had given him. Blood was
blood, after all. If the source of it was base,
it was too much to hope that a little removal, a little
dilution, would ennoble it. She had lived there
all her life the associate of thieves and rascals;
her way of looking on men and property must naturally
be that of the depredator, the pillager, and thief.
“And yet,” thought he,
thumb in the pocket of his hairy vest where the little
handkerchief lay, “and yet ”