Frayne lifted a cold face, from which emotion had been erased, and released her hand.

  “Take her home, Britt. I will follow,” he said, composedly, and stalked toward his grazing horse.

  CHAPTER III

  HOLLY RIPPLE’S SCHOOL life in New Orleans, from her ninth to her sixteenth year, had been one of comfort, luxury, restraint, so that when she was launched upon the wildest range on the frontier, soon to become sole mistress of Don Carlos’ Rancho with its great herds of cattle and droves of horses, she most certainly needed the pride and spirit that had been born in her.

  Britt had trained her ceaselessly and faithfully during these past years. She cared nothing for cattle, but as she loved horses he had taught her to ride them like an Indian and to know them. She developed a superb physique, strength, skill, endurance, and a daring that had cost her foreman much dismay and anxiety. But Britt could not perform miracles, and the hard life of the range failed to blunt thë soft feminine characteristics which had been fostered upon Holly during the impressionable forming time of adolescence. Perhaps the wise Colonel had intended this very thing.

  Naturally Holly had seen much rough life on the range. Curious, interested, thrilled by everything, it had not been possible to hold her back. The old caravan trail from Santa Fe to the Mississippi ran across her land. A Mexican village, the inhabitants of which were in her employ, nestled picturesquely below the great ranch-house. À branch post of Horn’s Trading Company was maintained here, where trappers came to sell and red men to buy and trade. Troops of dragoons stopped there on their way to escort caravans. From spring until winter the caravans passed, always camping in the cottonwood grove along the creek. Wagon-trains from Texas made the most of Don Carlos’ Rancho.

  In two short years much of western life had unrolled before Holly’s all-absorbing eyes. Half a hundred cowboys had come and gone. Many a wild or drunken cowboy had bit the dust or dug his spurs into the earth on her range. Fighting was the breath of their lives. Holly had seen the beginning or the end of innumerable brawls. She had been known to stop fights. On more than one occasion she had unwittingly ridden upon dark slack forms of men swinging by their necks from trees. She had viewed a brush between soldiers and savages; she had seen stage-coaches roll in with bloody drivers roaring and dead passengers with the living; she had been present that very spring when a cattleman and rustler shot it out fatally on the street of San Marcos.

  But the raw terrible spirit of the frontier had never closely touched Holly Ripple until this bright May morning when an outlaw had killed two of his comrades to save her.

  Holly rode away from that scene sick to her marrow. She had watched the encounter on her nerve. Every word and every action had been etched indelibly upon her consciousness. Anger at the boldness of these horse-thieves had given place to fury at their leader, and then to fright such as she had never known. If she could have saved the lives of Heaver and Covell by lifting her hand, she would not have done so. The West of her birth welled up in Holly that day. Afterward pride upheld her while she answered to irresistible and incomprehensible impulse in persuading this lone-wolf outlaw to become one of her riders.

  Upon facing homeward with Britt, the trenchant thrill of this impulse faded away. And then the ghastly business of what had threatened her, and the blood and death which had followed, resulted in a cold misery in her vitals. Only the interest in the strange man who had saved her kept Holly from reacting to that aftermath as might have one of her tenderfoot schoolmates in New Orleans who used to faint at the sight of blood.

  “Holly, you air pale aboot the gills,” spoke up Britt, solicitously, before they had ridden far. “An’ you ain’t settin’ yore saddle like you’d growed there.”

  “I’m sick — Cappy. Ride close.... But I’ll get over it.”

  “Shore you will. Grit yore teeth an’ hang on, Holly.”

  “Please don’t scold me — for riding down alone. You were right.”

  “Wal, lass, I’ll not scold you now, anyway. But I hope thet will be a lesson to you.”

  “It will be. I’ll never be headstrong again.... I promised him. Oh, he was ruthless, insulting. But no common sort!”

  “Holly, our new hand ‘peared to be a lot of things — one of which was chain-lightnin’. My Gawd, but he was quick!... Holly, I’ve seen a few of the great Texas gunmen draw. Frayne would have killed any one of them to-day. Wonder who he is?”

  Holly was silent. She did not want to know. Frayne repelled her even more than he fascinated her. What had possessed her to such a rash and inconsidered offer? Did she already regret it? Had gratitude and pity prompted her wholly? At length she turned in her saddle to see if Frayne was coming. No horseman in sight on the grassy plain! She felt relieved. He might not follow. Then hard on this thought stirred a vague and disturbing fear that he might not keep his word. Next instant she championed him with self-accusation. He would not lie. Shame edged into her conflicting emotions. Cold, ruthless, indifferent, insulting outlaw! No man had ever dared to so criticize her. Holly rode on unaware that her sickness was gradually succumbing to stronger sensations.

  “Cappy, was I wrong?” she asked, at length.

  “How so, lass?”

  “To offer him work?... To trust him?”

  “Wal, thet’s a stumper. Fust off I was scared stiff. But I’m hedgin’, Holly. If Brazos an’ Cherokee an’ the Southards take to Frayne I’d say his acquisition might turn oot great fer Don Carlos’ Rancho.”

  “You wouldn’t be afraid to trust him?”

  “It seems onreasonable, but I reckon I wouldn’t,” replied Britt, thoughtfully.

  “Is he — coming?” she asked, hurriedly.

  Britt glanced back over his shoulder to scan the rolling range. As he did not reply immediately, Holly grew conscious of a blank restless merging of relief and regret.

  “There he is, just toppin’ a rise,” answered Britt, at length. “Didn’t see him at fust. We might have knowed thet hombre — —”

  But Holly did not hear any more of Britt’s drawl. She suddenly grew deaf and dumb to all outside stimuli. Her sickness and conjecture vanished in a rush of startling glad certainty, which as quickly affronted her. Holly, in consternation, and with a sinking of her heart, tried to take refuge in the thought that this had been the most exciting and upsetting day of her life. But an uneasy, unstable sense of weakness remained with her.

  “Holly, there’s a caravan in,” spoke up Britt, eagerly pointing toward the long grove of cotton-woods, above which rose columns of blue smoke. “Fust from Las Animas this spring. Must be Buff Belmet. He’ll have loads of stuff fer us.”

  “Yes, indeed, and high time. Let us ride over to greet him,” replied Holly, suddenly animated.

  The afternoon sun shone on a natural scene of rangeland that never failed to awe and delight Holly. High on the grey-sloped, green-topped hill blazed the red of the old mansion. She could picture Don Carlos there in the days of the Spaniards, monarch of all he surveyed. It was hers, that indestructible home, vine-covered and weather-stained, a monument to the friendship between Don Carlos and the Indians, and likewise for her father’s day. No enemy had ever darkened that open portal. No man of any degree had ever been turned away from that door. Holly had kept faith with father and grandfather. She prayed that she might still do so in this wilder day yet to come.

  Soon the galloping horses reached the zone of cotton-woods, and then the wide clear brook babbling over gravelly bars. In the long half-circle on the other side, the caravan had halted for camp. How the great broad-wheeled, boat-bodied, grey-canvassed prairie-schooners thrilled Holly! They not only represented the forerunners of the western empire, but they seemed to be bridges across the plains to civilization. There were scores of these immense long-tongued wagons. Sturdy oxen were grazing away across the open; rolling mules were lifting the dust in many places; a hundred brace of horses had taken to the grass, while many were being unhitched. A dozen huge fires were burning. Red-shirted men stood out conspicuously among a horde of others, and all were busy as ants. The camp shone with colour and bummed with activity. It was a scene of a kind which never palled on Holly.

  As Britt and Holly rode up to the first group, several men advanced to greet them. Holly recognized a sturdy, bearded freighter who boomed at Britt, and then the magnificent Bluff Belmet, scout and plainsman, a friend of her father’s, and famous across the frontier. At the age of ten he had driven one of these great wagons. He had lost mother, father, brother, and childish sweetheart on his first trip across the plains. At twenty he was a leader of caravans and a noted Indian fighter. And now at thirty he had the lined, stern face, the piercing half-shut grey eye, the wonderful poise of the frontiersman to whom all had happened except death.

  The greetings were as between friends long separated.

  “An’ air you still single an’ fancy-free, Miss Holly?” queried the grizzled Jones.

  “At least, I’m still single,” replied Holly, with a laugh.

  “What’s the matter with these young ranchers an’ range-hands out hyar?”

  “Tom, it’s a case of too many to pick from,” drawled Britt. “How many wagons this trip? You shore come heeled.”

  “We left Las Animas with thirty-eight,” replied Belmet, “an’ we picked up twenty on the way. Jest as well, otherwise we might had more’n a brush with some Kiowas on the Dry Trail.”

  “I seen yore decorations,” replied Britt, pointing to the feathered arrows that stuck out in grim suggestiveness from the wagons. “Look there, Holly.”

  “I saw them long ago,” she replied, her eyes dilating.

  “How aboot my supplies, Bluff?” inquired the foreman. “Six wagons, Cap. I’ll leave them hyar for your boys to unpack, an’ pick them up on my way back from Santa Fe.”

  “Fine. We shore need them. An’ Miss Holly has been frettin’ more aboot—”

  “Now, Cappy, don’t betray my vanity,” gaily interrupted Holly. “Even if all my pretty things did come, I’ll never be vain again.”

  “Wal, Miss Holly, you don’t ‘pear your usual bloomin’ self at all,” chimed in Jones.

  “No wonder, Tom. She had a scare oot on the range to-day. An’ believe me, I had one, too,” replied Britt, seriously.

  “Friends, I’ve had a scare for every one of these,” said Belmet, putting his finger to the white hairs over his temples.

  “Britt, this hyar New Mexico was gettin’ hot last year,” interposed Jones, wagging his head. “Buff will agree with me, I’ll bet. You’re in for hell.”

  “I’d rather not give Miss Holly another scare to-day,” rejoined the scout.

  “I’ll tell you aboot it,” said Britt. “You know, Buff, how things happen right oot of a clear sky. This would have been plumb bad but fer a queer deal.” Whereupon Britt briefly told the story without mentioning Frayne’s name.

  “Miss Holly, ain’t you ever goin’ to grow up?” queried Jones, reprovingly. “This range ain’t safe fer a girl no more.”

  “I fear I discovered that to-day.”

  Belmet shook his eagle head in grave portent. “It’s comin’, Cap. I told Colonel Ripple thet years ago. Too big an’ wild a range. Too many great herds of cattle. In Maxwell’s day beef was cheap. He couldn’t give it away. But this is a new era. The range offers easy pickin’ fer rustlers, an’ good markets. All the bad outfits will flock into New Mexico.”

  “I had thet figgered, an’ I’m goin’ to meet the situation with an ootfit of my own.”

  “Thet’s the Texas idee, Cap. You’ll give them a run for your beef.”

  “Buff, did you ever run into or heah of a fellar whose handle is Frayne — Renn Frayne?”

  “Frayne? I know him. Not likely to forget him, either. Cap, I was present in Abilene some years back when Frayne made your Texas gunman, Wess Hardin, take water.”

  “No!” ejaculated Britt, incredulously.

  “Hard to believe, an’ thet’s why it’s not generally known. But I saw it. Frayne bluffed Hardin. Dared him to draw. An’ would have killed him, too.”

  “Wal, I’ll be darned. Who is this Frayne, Buff?”

  “I don’t know who he is, but I can tell you what he is.”

  “Go ahaid. Miss Holly an’ me air shore interested. It was Frayne who did the shootin’ to-day.”

  “You don’t say?... I met Frayne first time after the war. Young fellar, footloose an’ wild, with a hand for guns. He was a cow-puncher. He became one of many hard-shootin’ hombres. I heerd of him often after thet, but never seen him again until thet time in Abilene. Then he was classed with the best of gunmen. An’ you know, you could count them on the fingers of one hand. Let’s see. That was three years ago. After thet he killed Strickland’s foreman, an’ went on the dodge.”

  “Crooked?”

  “No. It was the other way round, as I heerd. Strickland was a power in Kansas. An’ any one who bucked him had sheriffs an’ jails to reckon with.”

  “Like Chisum?”

  “I wouldn’t class Chisum with Strickland, except as a hard driver of men.”

  “What was yore idee of Frayne?”

  “Wal, I reckon some different from thet of most of the youngsters I’ve met along the Old Trail. Most boys of good families didn’t last long. The Englishmen — an’ there was a sight of them — an’ still comin’ — petered out pronto. They didn’t adapt themselves. They got snuffed out. But Frayne had the stern stuff of the Texas cowboy. He lasted. An’ I’m glad to hear he done you a service.”

  “Is Frayne an ootlaw?”

  “I reckon so, back in Kansas. An’ probably Nebraska, Wyomin’, Colorado. But I wouldn’t call him an outlaw here in New Mexico.’Cause there ain’t any law yet.”

  “Wal, last summer we inaugurated what hawse-thieves an’ rustlers fear wuss than a gun — the rope,” declared Britt, forcibly.

  “Cap, has it occurred to you thet Frayne would be a whole outfit in himself, if you could hire him?” asked Belmet, thoughtfully. “I reckon you couldn’t, though. Anyway, Miss Holly wouldn’t have a bad hombre like Frayne around the ranch.”

  “Wouldn’t I?” rejoined Holly, hiding her nervous embarrassment. “I thought of it first and asked him.”

  “Good! You are wakin’ up to the needs of the range,” declared the scout. “It takes bad men to cope with bad men on this frontier.”

  “We’ve got him, Buff,” added Britt, with satisfaction. “An’ since I seen you last summer I’ve added Brazos Keene, Cherokee Jack, Tex an’ Max Southard, an’ two or three other tough nuts to our outfit. Now with Frayne it shore beats any bunch I — ever heahed of. I’ll be obliged if you’ll spread thet news all along the Old Trail.”

  “You bet I will,” replied Belmet emphatically. “I’ll lay it on thick, too.... Miss Holly, I shore feel sorry for you. But it’s the way to tide over this rustler wave.”

  “Britt, I know you was a Texas Ranger, an’ a Trail Boss, but can you handle an outfit like thet?” asked the bearded man with Jones.

  “It’ll be the job of my life, but I’ll do it.”

  “They’ll fight among themselves over Miss Holly,” declared Jones, quizzically.

  “Wal, thet’s up to her,” laughed Britt.

  “Gentlemen, it may amuse you, but it’s not funny to me,” interposed Holly. “But thank you for the advice — and come up for supper. We shall want to hear the news.”

  “Miss Holly!” expostulated Belmet, aghast. “It’s awful good of you.... Look at us ragamuffins!”

  “Come as you are, Belmet. At six o’clock sharp.”

  “Wal, be it upon your bonny head, Miss Holly.... I almost forgot to tell you. There’s a man with us who claims to know you. He’s in the Texas crowd. I didn’t get his name. We heerd about him from the women folks in thet train. They gossiped. Handsome rich southerner — suitor of yours when you was in school in Orleans — comin’ to visit you, an’ all thet sort of talk.”

  “I have no personal friends or acquaintances in the south,” replied Holly, dubiously.

  “Wal, accordin’ to the caravan gossip this gentleman was more’n a personal acquaintance,” went on Belmet. “I didn’t take much stock by it. But remembering’ how you’re run after by so many adventurers, I reckoned I’d better tell you.”

  “Indeed yes. Thank you, Belmet.... Come to supper, surely.

  I must go now.”

  When Holly was half-way home Britt caught up with her. “Wal, lass, you look fagged. Rest a couple of hours, an’ throw off all thet’s troublin’ you.”

  “I wish I could. To-day seems to be a cloud on the horizon.”

  “Wal, thet cloud will come an’ go.... I see some of the cowboys ridin’ in. An’ there’s our new man pokin’ along. Holly, I’m glad Belmet gave Frayne a better rep than he gave himself.”

  “I was glad, too. Still, it was bad enough.”

  “Holly, you’re right. An’ at thet Buff had no line on Frayne these last few years. I take it Frayne finally went to the bad. It always happens thet way. But mebbe nothin’ will come of it. The West is awful big an’ in these times you cain’t separate bad from good. We can afford to be charitable.”

  “Will you please ask Frayne to supper?”

  “I was aboot to give you a hint. Let’s impress him powerful fine fust thing.... Shall I set him next to you?”

  “By all means.... Britt, I’m worried about Brazos.”

  “Wal, you’re wastin’ yore feelin’. Thet boy will be ridin’ in pronto.”

  “But Stinger is dead or wounded!”

  “So we heahed. In either case Brazos will fetch him in.... Now, Holly lass, leave it all to me. If I cain’t pick up Brazos with the glass I’ll send some of the cowboys after him.... You go sleep a while an’ forget this mess, an’ then make yoreself prettier than ever before.”

  “Cappy! — Why so unusually — pretty?” inquired Holly, curiously, with a smile.