“Wal, it’s a free country,” answered the foreman, not heartily.

  “Who air you, stranger?” asked the Chisum cowman, fastening hard eyes upon Lascelles.

  “My name’s Lascelles. I’m from Louisiana.”

  “Gambler?”

  “I play cards for pleasure.”

  “This fellar Frayne called you a card-sharp.”

  “He’s a-a-er … That’s not true. The cowboys lost and put up a job on me.”

  “What’s thet talk about your imposin’ on Miss Ripple?” queried Slaughter, with a crackling laugh.

  “More balderdash,” retorted Lascelles. “I’m a guest here. Everybody in the West knows of the Ripple brag. All welcome! Stay as long as you like! No man ever turned away from that Ripple door!—That would be enough. But I knew Holly Ripple in New Orleans…. We were sweethearts. Her father took her away. I got here finally to try to win her back. And these jealous ——”

  “Stop the ——— ——— liar!” burst out Brazos, flaming of face.

  “Wal, by ———, thet’s interestin’,” drawled Slaughter. “I’ve heard a sight aboot thet little lady. Sweet on you, Lascelles?”

  “Yes, she was.”

  “Jest what you mean by sweet?” went on Slaughter, his evil mind betrayed in tone and look.

  Brazos’ harsh appeal to Frayne caused Lascelles to turn, and suddenly he read something in Frayne’s menace that the arrival of the Slaughter contingent had disrupted.

  “No gentleman ever kisses and tells,” he responded.

  “Haw! Haw! Haw! … But come out with it, Lascelles…. Hellno!—Keep yore mouth shet.”

  Frayne had taken a forward stride, his gun going to a level with his eye. It quivered and froze.

  “Another word about Holly Ripple and I’ll shoot out your teeth,” hissed Frayne.

  “Lascelles, you’ll need your teeth,” interposed Slaughter, as cool as if disaster did not impend. “You can keep—all thet fer my private ear…. How’d you like to throw in with my outfit? We’re footloose. Got plenty of money an’ big deals on buyin’ an’ sellin’ cattle.”

  “I’ll do it,” choked out Lascelles.

  “You’re in. Come on. Send fer yore pack an’ camp with us tonight,” rejoined Slaughter, motioning his men back and wheeling his horse. He turned in his saddle.

  “Britt, I’ll see you at the fandango,” he said, jeeringly.

  The foreman was glad indeed that he did not have a gun on him.

  “Frayne, we’ll meet again,” called Slaughter, from the slope.

  The outlaw’s piercing gaze did not leave the retreating Lascelles until he passed out of sight with the horsemen under the trees. He might not have heard Russ Slaughter’s taunting last call.

  Brazos’ first move, after being relieved from that restraint, was to boot the southerner in the rear. “Taylor, get oot. Go along with them. An’ Gawd help yu if yu run into me again!”

  The frightened young man, ashen of face, and dripping water from his bedraggled garments, hurried up the slope to disappear in the direction of the village.

  “Brazos! You’re plumb loco!” remonstrated Britt.

  “Who’n hell ain’t?—Mad? I’m so ——— ——— mad I could bite nails. Look at Laigs, heah! He’s spittin’ fire, but he cain’t talk. Look at Frayne. White in the face, by Gawd! Look at yourself, boss. You’re green. All ’cause we got ketched with our pants off. No guns!—Cap, if yu ever rustle my gun again, fer any reason whatsoever, I’ll hate yore guts.”

  “I’m sorry, Brazos. But cool down. Mebbe it’s better we weren’t packin’ our hardware. What do you say, Renn?”

  “Britt, I haven’t swallowed so much in years,” replied the outlaw, breathing heavily. “I’d say—let’s never be caught unarmed again.”

  “Boss, you’ll bust the outfit wide open,” claimed Mason. “Course we-all know it’s on account of Miss Holly. What you-all say, fellars?”

  “You needn’t vote on it,” interrupted Britt, harshly. “My fault! Old Ranger thet I am—thet girl makes me wax in her hands. But boys, she’s no squeamish woman. She’s got guts. She’s jest afraid some of you cowboys will be shot.”

  “Shore she is, bless her heart!” rang Brazos. “But we’re gonna get bored anyhow. An’ I want my guns an’ my chances.”

  “Boys, after this you’re wakin’ an’ sleepin’ arsenals,” ordered Britt, grimly.

  “Whoopee!” bawled Laigs Mason.

  “All the same we’re gonna use our haids,” concluded Britt.

  Brazos turned to Frayne and thrust out his long arm and quivering hand. His boyish face lost its tense cruelty and bitterness in a warm and beautiful smile.

  “Shake, Renn.”

  The outlaw made haste to comply, for once somewhat flustered.

  “Yu saved my life. Thet gambler would have bored me. I seen murder in his eye.”

  “Struck me that way,” rejoined Frayne, as Brazos wrung his hand. “Bad mess. I was afraid I’d have to shoot Lascelles. Slaughter’s an ugly, contrary cuss.”

  “He didn’t quite savvy yu, Renn,” went on Brazos. “But I did, shore. An’ I was itchin’ to line up beside yu.”

  Britt placed a clasping hand on the grip of the two men. “Thet should make you friends.”

  “Pards, if Renn will have it,” replied Brazos, his strong, wild spirit visible in his blue eyes.

  “Brazos, I would only be too glad. But—” Frayne’s piercing gray eyes, fine and glad yet doubtful, strove to read the cowboy’s mind.

  “There ain’t no buts—leastways no more.”

  “Frayne, take him up. Brazos is a true blue Texan,” interposed Britt, in earnest zeal. “Cement this proffered friendship. It’ll save the ootfit.”

  “Frayne, I never had one damn thing against yu—but—but—” and here Brazos hesitated and grew as rosy as any girl.

  “But! There you are, Brazos,” replied Frayne, hastily. “I know what it is, you darned locoed cowboy! I’ll take your word…. Don’t give yourself away in front of this bunch of hard eggs!”

  “I shore will, Renn,” retorted Brazos recovering his cool ease. There was something winning about him then. “I never had a damn thing against yu—but—but this…. Fust off I was afeared Miss Holly l-liked you better’n me. An’ now I know it.”

  “Brazos!—You sentimental jackass,” retorted Frayne, his anger vying with other and more powerful feelings. An unfamiliar ruddy tinge showed under his tan. “You are wrong…. But I appreciate what it cost you to come clean like this…. I’m with you for life, cowboy.”

  “Laigs, yu pop-eyed geezer,” ejaculated Brazos, roughly, perhaps to hide more emotion, “shake hands with our new pard, Renn Frayne.”

  Chapter Six

  HOLLY had barred herself in her room for an hour’s relaxation and rest after the long preparation for her party. This day was the third anniversary of this event inaugurated by her father on the occasion of her birthday. She was twenty years old; she was wondrously happy about innumerable things and unhappy about only one.

  There came a knock on her door, accompanied by Britt’s familiar voice: “Holly, don’t disturb yoreself. But you ordered me to report.”

  “Yes, Cappy…. Oh, I hope….”

  “All’s well. The cowboys air sober, fine, happy like a lot of colts, an’ shore prancin’ aboot.”

  “All of them?” called Holly, with eagerness.

  “Lady, thet applies to every single last one of the ootfit.”

  “Thank Heaven! … And you, Cappy?”

  “Shore. But you’ll have to thank Renn considerable,” drawled the foreman.

  “Renn?” thrilled Holly.

  “I said Renn. Thet’s Frayne’s first handle, you know,” replied Britt, with a touch of dry humor.

  Holly hesitated a moment, conscious of a suspension of breath, and a heat in her cheeks.

  “Why must I thank—Renn?”

  “Wal, I’ll tell you some other time. Adios, señorita…. Be shore you’re not late.”

  She heard his clinking steps pass through the living-room, and out on the path. Holly sat up on her bed, dreamily stirred, aware that the last hour was at hand, and then arose to gaze out of her window. The sun was tipping the high mountain wall in the West. Splendor of scene and glory of color held Holly enraptured. The open range rolled away from Don Carlos’ Rancho, a wild and purple world, so vast that the specks of cattle, the threads of roads and trails, the dots of distant ranches and towns appeared lost in an immensity of space. The sun sent shafts of gold down upon the white peaks. Long scattered stretches of cloud, like islands of rose in a golden sea, lay above the bold horizon. All the shadows under the clear bulk of the mountains were of an obscuring purple. And even while Holly gazed it seemed that the purple sheen was encroaching upon the gold-fired empire of grass, softening, enveloping, changing with magic alchemy.

  The loveliest sunset of the year, so far, Holly thought, had come upon her birthday, as if to honor her party, and remind her of the incomparable beauty of New Mexico. Below the ranch-house the Mexican village, the wide flat between it and the cottonwood-bordered creek, bathed in the glow of sunset hues, glittered and flashed with the activity of the most colorful day of the year on that range. At the village it was fiesta day. Indian camps, cowboy camps, rancher’s camps, covering of a wagon-train shone brightly gold; horses grazed everywhere, as if that grassy flat was a huge pasture; far out along the creek the dark spots of outlaw and stranger camps, significantly far apart, attested to the drawing power of the Ripple invitation to all.

  When Holly’s father had inaugurated this annual entertainment, which was merely a grand festival embodying the principles of hospitality that he had held for years, conditions on the range had been very different. The one drawback now, Holly admitted, was the presence of many undesirables who came out of curiosity or for other motives inimical to the courtesy that made it possible for them to be present. Someday, much as Holly hated to think of it, she would be compelled to change her father’s hospitable policy. It was Britt, supported by Clements, Doane, Haywood, and other ranchers with experience and standing on the frontier, who was accountable for this drastic change in Holly’s mind. She had never dreamed, until lately, that she could ever go against her father’s wishes. Another factor was the annoyance, not to say actual distress, fostered upon Holly by fortune-hunters such as Lascelles, and that ne’er-do-well brother of a schoolmate, Lee Taylor, both of whom had made her virtually a prisoner in her own home. Then there were others, Westerners, especially Sewall McCoy, whom Britt called Holly’s rival rancher, who had been persistent in flattering but most unwelcome attentions since their arrival at the rancho.

  Holly cast all thought of them aside, as well as doubts about this annual birthday fiesta. Then she thought of Renn Frayne, and that was different. Britt had used the outlaw’s first name. Renn! Holly liked the sound of it. She recalled that she had put its owner out of her mind of late. But this time she seemed to surrender to Britt’s insidious hint. Frayne had somehow subdued those wild cowboys. Holly left her window. She paced the floor. There hung the exquisite gown, with its soft folds of Spanish lace, which she must be putting on presently. Would Renn Frayne like her in that? No!—Would he even see her? Long had Holly’s pride suffered over his indifference, all to no avail. The more proof of his callousness to her beauty, the more he fascinated her. Holly had a sudden attack of honesty. It was no use to lie to herself any longer. Would Renn Frayne admire her in the beautiful gown? Would he ask her to dance? It shocked Holly to realize that for her the success of this long-prepared-for party depended upon the response of an outlaw, whose notorious fame had gradually dawned out of the eastern ranges. For weeks past she had feared that her feeling for Frayne was actually and dismayingly serious. Then, not long ago, had come a climax, a change that caused her as much shame to recall as when it had first burned over her. One day, riding up to Horn’s Post, she had gone in to encounter Frayne most obviously attentive to Señorita Conchita Velasquez. There were several pretty girls in the village, but Conchita was by far the prettiest, as well as the most seductive and irresistible. All the cowboys, even Brazos, had run after her, and it was Holly’s opinion that the dusky-eyed maiden, like the majority of her soft-voiced, voluptuous kind, was not absolutely unattainable. Holly had reproved Brazos for dallying with Conchita. It had seemed a far stranger, and somehow stingingly shameful thing to catch Renn Frayne flirting with the girl. Holly had ridden home furious with herself, thinking one moment that she loved Frayne and the next that she hated him.

  “But Conchita is distractingly pretty,” mused Holly, now trying to be fair to Frayne, as she had been to the other cowboys. “She’s a seductive creature. If I were a man I’d be crazy about her…. But Frayne—Oh! he wouldn’t ——”

  Holly dared not go on with this thought, for she divined that to do so would result in the realization that Frayne might very well find Conchita as attractive as the other cowboys apparently found her. And this was a contingency Holly felt she wanted to escape, not that she could not be woman enough to excuse Frayne, but that it must lay bare the mysterious and mounting tumult of her own heart.

  “Quien sabe? My party tonight may tell me much,” soliloquized Holly, soberly. “So much that I may never give another.”

  Whereupon she admitted her maid Roseta, and called Ann Doane, who with her father, was a guest at the rancho. Ann was a buxom girl of seventeen, rosy-cheeked and blue-eyed, a daughter of the frontier. In the pleasant bustle that ensued, the introspective and troublesome thought went into abeyance.

  “Ann, how many of your beaus will be here?” asked Holly, mischievously.

  “Laws! All of them, Holly,” ejaculated Ann, with a giggle. “And I’m shore scared stiff.”

  “Why? You should be delighted.”

  “Holly, I’ll tell you if you promise to keep it secret,” whispered Ann, tensely.

  “Of course I promise.”

  “It’s this, Holly— Oh, it’s awful to confess…. Last night I—I promised to marry Skylark.”

  “What?—My cowboy Skylark?” exclaimed Holly, in delight.

  “There’s shore only one—an’ he’s the hombre.”

  “Ann!—How perfectly splendid! I’m happy to hear it. I congratulate you. Skylark is one of my—my steadiest boys.”

  “Well, you know, Holly, that isn’t so terribly steady,” rejoined Ann, sagely. “Sky is all right. I’m not flustered about his bad habits. I’ll settle them…. What worried me is that I took up with him before I ended off with some other boys.”

  “Dear! That is awful. Ann, you don’t mean any other of my cowboys. Not Brazos?”

  “Not that flaxen-haired devil! Or I would be scared. Brazos never no more than chucked me under the chin once, an’ said if I got lonesome he’d ride over. These other boys are from over our way—an’ well, they’re not crazy aboot any of the Ripple ootfit. There’ll be a fight, but I swear I’ll keep it from happening here at your party. Holly, I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t.”

  “Ann, we women have to forgive much, don’t we?” sighed Holly. “Last year at my party there were three fights—one of which ended in gun-play down below.”

  “Shore I remember. But thet’s pretty good, I reckon. Sam Price was not shot seriously. And he shore deserved a licking. You were away so long at school. This is the West, Holly. My Dad says it’s going to be the hellbentenest West thet ever was.”

  “So does Britt,” laughed Holly. “I’m trying to prepare myself for war. But I hate the idea.”

  “There’ll be war over you tonight, if I don’t miss my hunch,” declared the Western girl. “Holly, you never looked so—so lovely. These hombres will go mad.”

  “Do you think so, Ann?” murmured Holly, intrigued by the startling idea.

  “I know it. Holly, you’re a year older, different somehow, more of a-a— Oh, I can’t tell you.”

  “Ann! You don’t mean this gown. I’m afraid to look in my mirror…. Arms, shoulders all bare! My— Oh, I feel naked. It’s an indecent gown, Ann.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as that,” remonstrated the girl, loyally. “It’s cut pretty low. But, Holly Ripple, you’re a grand dame.”

  “Ann, if it’s really—so bad—I’ll lose my nerve,” faltered Holly. “I had it made in Santa Fe. I never tried it on. I was afraid I’d try to alter it here. I’ve the dress I wore last year.”

  “Holly, you may feel queer when you see yourself, but you can’t never change now. Not for this fiesta! … Roseta, what do you say? Doesn’t the Señorita look grand?”

  Roseta was volatile, passionate and incredibly flattering, without a hint of what Holly feared.

  “Et ees so, La Señorita, she ees so lovely. And her dress? … Que bonita! Que hermosa!”

  When eventually Holly stood up to view her image in the mirror she uttered a little cry of shocked amaze. Following that came another emotion, one she sought to shunt aside before it dominated her completely enough to make her appearance in this gown impossible. She sustained more girlish vanity than fear, more womanly pride than shame. She soothed the still small voice of conscience which had haunted her, for she knew her father would not have sanctioned this Spanish gown. At that moment she loved her little regal head, with its rich black hair so beautifully and elaborately dressed. Excitement had given her face a pearly pallor. She hardly recognized those dark, turbulent eyes, such indicative masks of her troubled and passionate heart.

  For an endless moment she gazed, divided between widely separated impulses, with a strong leaning toward that in her which was American and which her father had fostered and developed. But the throb and beat of her Spanish blood conquered. The flashing thought which swayed Holly was that Renn Frayne should see her thus, cost what such folly might. Then the swift fire of scarlet neck and face stung her with the bitter and terrible truth—she loved this outlaw. An instant later she was as pale as marble, true to the proud Castilian race of Valverdes as well as the indomitable spirit of her pioneer father.

  Holly viewed herself anew, with eyes unbiased by a shameful secret.