Jackson took the glasses from his eyes and wiped them with his scarf. Britt attended closely to the race. It seemed to him that the distance between Santone, whom they recognized by his gray horse, and the last of the fugitives, was about a quarter of a mile. All horses were running, but apparently not extended yet. If the rustlers had rifles they had a chance to stop their pursuers and escape. If not—! Britt was keen to ascertain this point. He had been in many a running race in which the general dislike of most riders for rifles had been their doom.

  “Boss, guess I hed dat five miles wrong,” said Jackson. “Nebber was no good at distance…. Reckon two miles now. An’ dey’re comin’ into dat long sage-flat…. Brazos cuts across. His men foller. Dey’re behind Santone’s bunch. But ketchin’ up…. Spreadin’ again, boss. An’ dem rustlers stringin’ straight ahaid. By golly, it’s like chasin’ rabbits into a burro…. Whoopee! Brazos has cut loose. Dat white hoss is stretchin’. Boss, dere ain’t his beat on dis range…. An’ look at dat Santone. He ain’t gonna be left at de post. None of ’em is…. Boss, dat space is shortenin’ some pronto. See dem rifles shine…. Boss, de rustlers air shootin’! … Six guns, boss, Haw! Haw! I jes see one damn rifle in dat string. Ob all de white trash fools! … Boss, I’se gettin’ hot under de collar. I see de dust kickin’ up by bullets way in front ob our boys. Aboot tree hundred yards, mebbe…. Dey’se comin’, boss. Heah dem guns boomin’? … Lud, how Brazos can hold dat fire! I’d sho be smokin’ ’em…. Awha! Dey’se shootin’, boss. Dem rifles air talkin’! Whoopee! … Dat last rustler. Hit! He sho takes a lot of killin’. Down!—Dere’s a hoss piles up…. Anudder rustler down! Anudder! … Haw! Haw! Youse will steal Ripple cattle…. Two hosses down! Tree plungin’ off, saddles empty…. Boss, boss! Heah—dem riles pingin’? See dat rustler lead fallin’—short?”

  “Save yore breath, Jack,” ordered Britt, sharply. “You’ll hev to be runnin’ to haid some of them off. Two of them air far in front. They’re on the grade.”

  “Look at dem beat dere hosses!—Boss, dey might git away down dere. But nebber up heah.”

  Jackson laid the glass down and slipped back into the brush. Britt heard his boots thudding. The negro would close the one avenue of escape.

  Two of the rustlers were far in advance, out of rifle range. The two behind them, goading their horses, tried to increase the distance between them and their relentless pursuers. Brazos was in the lead, reloading his rifle. Santone came next and his rifle was puffing blue clouds of smoke. The other riders, scattered in a line to the right, were firing at intervals. Suddenly the last rider swerved abruptly off the trail and tore across and down in a daring attempt to pass Brazos. Then began as thrilling a man-hunt race as Britt had ever seen. Brazos headed to cut the rustler off before he gained the corner of the slope, some few hundred yards distant. The fugitive, desperately goading his horse, gained perceptibly. But he had farther to go. And Brazos had slowed. Perhaps he wanted to get his rifle fully reloaded. Certainly he did not choose to close in on the rustler, whose bullets were striking up dust beyond him. In a magnificent burst of speed, slanting down the slope, the rustler passed Brazos out upon the flat. But he had not reckoned upon what the crafty cowboy had counted upon. Once on a level, straight in front, the rustler had no hope for his life. He was now reloading. Still at two hundred yards Brazos withheld his fire. The white racer stretched lower, to close up that gap as if by magic. And then as the rustler turned again in his saddle, his arm high, his gun spouting red, Brazos bent his head over his levelled rifle. One blue puff of smoke—another—a third! The rustler pitched headlong out of his saddle, to be dragged by a stirrup at the heel of a terrified horse, to be torn loose by the grasping sage. Brazos kept on.

  Britt’s gaze came back to the draw, in time to see the rustler farthest behind shot off his horse. He flopped liked a crippled rooster. He got up on one knee, and with levelled gun, faced his merciless pursuers. Even as his gun puffed smoke they mowed him down.

  That left the two fugitives far up the draw, still goading their horses. When Santone slowed up on the trail, now getting too steep to run a horse, the rustlers did likewise. One of them kept shooting back down the draw. He handed one of his guns to his comrade who proceeded to load it. Santone’s followers caught up with them. Brazos’ piercing yell floated up from the flat. He put the white to a gallop until he reached the grade.

  At this juncture Britt picked up the field-glass. In that hard grim moment he had no pity for these doomed men. They were some four or five hundred yards distant, and still below him. The trail ascended on the far side of this draw. Jackson would be hidden somewhere above.

  Britt fixed the glass upon the two rustlers, and brought them so close that it seemed he might touch them. The taller, a bare-headed, sallow, lead-faced ruffian he had seen in Slaughter’s outfit. He mopped back his wet dishevelled hair with a bloody hand, still holding a gun and gazed down the slope, speaking to his companion, who on the instant handed him another weapon. He cocked and levelled it deliberately, to aim long, to fire down the draw. Dust puffed up right in front of the cowboys’ horses. They made haste to spread; and harsh yells rang up from them. Britt did not recognize the second rustler. He was a matured grizzled man, his dark face sullenly vague under his black sombrero.

  They pushed the dust- and lather-coated horses just to the point of stalling them on the trail. Loud curses pealed down upon their pursuers. Britt clearly saw the bulging jaw of the hatless one, the sombre hawk-head of the other. Then the silence split to the negro’s bellow.

  “Slow down—white trash!”

  Britt’s keen gaze, glued to the glass, saw the rustlers whirl with terrific start. Something checked their violence. Something like wind streaked the tall grass beyond them, to strike up dust. Then two Winchester shots pealed almost simultaneously. The rustlers fell together, one upon the other. And the spent horses drooped. Britt realized that he had been witness to an extraordinary sight—that of seeing the impact of two bullets upon grass and ground, after they had passed through the bodies of the men, and before he had heard the shots. Wheeling in grim amaze, Britt espied the little negro out in the open where undoubtedly he had stepped to confront his quarry.

  Chapter Twelve

  SPRING rudely disrupted Holy Ripple’s dream. All the long winter months she had been happy, free from the dream of rustler raids and cowboy fights, reading and dreaming in the big sunny living-room, before an open fire of cedar logs, and on Saturday nights giving a little fiesta with music and dancing. Always she had contrived to see Frayne or to send him a note, and though he always made excuses, the love in her heart kept warm and sweet. He feared to be with her, and Holly feared to be with him, though she yearned for it.

  Holly hated the snow, and she could not face the cold wind that whipped down from the heights. Wherefore in winter she could indulge in languishing dreams during her enforced idleness. Holly was ashamed of what she considered a weakness. Always she intended to grow hardy and strong like Ann Doane, to ride in any weather, to exercise the various accomplishments that she possessed, to learn what a pioneer wife should know. But she did not progress far that winter. She blamed it upon love.

  The restlessness of spring pervaded her. When the snow melted off the knolls, and it felt good to walk out in sunny protected spots, when the dusty melees began again in the corrals, and the lean riders to sweep over the gray bleached flats, when caravans and stages, horses and cattle began to move, then Holly knew that the thrilling, disturbing, shocking range-life had again come into its own.

  The killing of Doane opened Holly’s eyes to the true state of affairs on that range. Not right but might was the law of the unscrupulous, and its exponent was the six-shooter. If her father had lived on to this period he might have been as helpless before such a ruthless creed as had been Doane. Britt blamed Doane for talking too much. It came to light after this tragedy that Doane’s stock had entirely vanished from the range, and his son and daughter were left in poverty. Holly sent for them. They arrived one day with a wagon-load of possessions, and the few horses that had been left them. Joe took up his abode with the cowboys, who welcomed him heartily. Young Doane was no detriment even to the hard-riding Ripple outfit. Ann went up to the big ranch-house to live with Holly.

  All the cowboys, especially Skylark, approved of this arrangement, and only Britt demurred. The reason for this, Holly divined, was that Britt would find it harder to keep her in the dark as to what was going on. Ann Doane was younger than Holly in years, but appeared far older. She had been born in a prairie-schooner crossing the plains; she had only the teaching her mother had given her as a child; she was a comely, rose-cheeked, stalwart girl who could ride like a cowboy, throw a rope, and who had at the calloused finger-tips of her strong brown hands all the skill of the pioneer girl. And she was as strong in character as she was in body. She was frank, droll, simple, big hearted and wise in the ways of the range. She was Western.

  Very soon after Ann arrived Skylark voiced the desire of his heart. He wanted to marry her at once. Ann was willing, though she felt that she ought to wait until a little after her father’s death. There was an empty log cabin which could be fixed up comfortably.

  “You see, Holly, it’s this way,” pleaded the tall cowboy. “Ann an’ me might as well have each other while we can.”

  “Meaning what, you persuasive devil?” inquired Holly, dubiously.

  “I’m liable to get shot any day,” returned Skylark, bluntly.

  “Oh, dreadful!—Such an argument for marriage!—You are not going to get anything of the kind.”

  “Lady, some of us boys will get it this summer—an’ it might be me,” said Skylark, with the cool inevitableness of his kind, which always stilled Holly’s protests.

  “Sky, marry Ann whenever she says,” replied Holly. “I’ll do all I can to start you comfortably.”

  Whereupon Skylark ran off with a glad whoop, evidently sure of Ann’s surrender. She did set a day, a not very distant one; then naturally, she grew absorbed in the important details of making a bare log cabin habitable for house-keeping. Holly fell into the spell of this, and helped so much and gave so much that Ann protested.

  “Holly, it’s shore awful good of you. But I just can’t take any more. Save somethin’ for yourself.”

  “Me!—Oh, nonsense,” exclaimed Holly, with a blush.

  “You’ll be gettin’ married one of these days.”

  “Ann, a girl has to be asked,” retorted Holly, lightly.

  “Holly Ripple! You can’t be serious…. An’ you ought. This marryin’ business is serious out heah.”

  “I’m serious, Ann.”

  “Thet is nonsense. Everybody on this range knows all the single boys an’ some of the married men have tried to court you. Didn’t my man?”

  “You mean Skylark?—No indeed. Sky liked me. He tried to ——”

  “Wal, Sky told me so himself,” interrupted Ann, in her appallingly blunt way. “It’s all right. I couldn’t be jealous of you. All the boys love you…. Holly, ain’t you ever goin’ to love one of them back?”

  “Dear me, I hope so,” murmured Holly.

  “Wal, you’ll just have to. A girl can’t go single on this range. It ain’t good. It ain’t right…. These pore, lonely, woman-hungry men! They all need an’ want a woman. An’ just think, Holly, outside of you an’ me there’s only five other unmarried white girls in eastern New Mexico. An’ hundreds of cowboys. Not quite enough to go round.”

  “Ann, you make it look terrible. Poor boys.”

  “How aboot Brazos, Holly? There’s a fellow!—I was crazy over Brazos.”

  “He’s wonderful. I—I like him, Ann. But that’s not enough.”

  “I heah a lot aboot this Renn Frayne,” went on Ann, complacently. “Talk goes thet he’s turrible sweet on you. Is it so, Holly?”

  “He never—told me,” faltered Holly, wanting the floor to open and swallow her. Yet she knew this honest Western girl would be good for her.

  “Do you like him, too?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “He’s a man, Holly, no young wild cowboy!—Wonderful lookin’ chap. Kinda sad, I thought. I’d hate to have him shine up to me, Skylark or no Skylark. His gun record wouldn’t phase me. Dad told me all thet’s said aboot Frayne…. Holly, out heah you can’t afford to be particular. If you are goin’ to live in the West you’ve got to take the West. I know Westerners. Most of them at some time or other weren’t so damn good. My Dad rustled calves when he first started in. Yet he shot a man once who stole from him. An’ Sky has confessed some pretty bad jobs of his…. Holly, you’re young, you’re rich, you’re beautiful, an’ everybody loves you. But where are you gettin’ with it all?”

  “Nowhere, Ann.”

  “Wal, I say thet’s too darn bad. I’m going to talk to some of these cowboys.”

  “Don’t you dare, Ann Doane.”

  “I’m goin’ to tell thet handsome hombre Frayne somethin’.”

  “Oh, Ann—please don’t,” cried Holly, wildly, her dignity dissolving.

  “Holly! You shore must like him a lot,” rejoined the Western girl, shrewdly. “Wal, in thet case I’ll lay off Frayne. But somethin’ has got to be done aboot you. I’m shore glad I’ve come to live at Don Carlos’ Rancho.”

  Holly escaped somehow, but that talk with the Western girl, coupled with all the preparations for the wedding and the furnishing of the little cabin, awakened Holly to her own outcast and deplorable state. She made the discovery that she longed for this very thing herself. It was not that she desired marriage so much: she wanted to be Frayne’s wife. She had dreamed of him all winter; she had been happy because he really loved her, and some day it would all work out beautifully. But now something stirred her sluggish blood. If she could have changed places with Ann Doane, provided Skylark were Frayne, she would have given money, jewels, all the old Spanish lace, her ranch and her cattle, just for that cosy little log-cabin.

  So the old haunting distemper again laid its hold upon Holly’s heart. She had been living in a girl’s romantic dreamland. Nine years of books, of gentle women, of garden walls, of isolation and protection had ill-fitted her for her part on this hard range. She would have to fight. She had been happy because she had denied realities. She was madly in love with an outlaw who had reformed, but whose fine instincts refused to lay the dishonor of his past upon her. Holly no longer cared what Renn Frayne had been. She wanted his sad, bitter, hard lips to soften to her kisses. Yet her respect for him increased in proportion to his restraint, his strength, his loyalty; and all that mad scheme of coquetry, of stooping to the allurements of Conchita, was as if it had never been.

  Ann Doane’s wedding-day came all too soon. Holly had found the preparations, the interest, the excitement, the companionship of the girl, strangely stimulating. Ann was married in the Ripple living-room by the padre of the village. Holly gave the bride and groom a fiesta, at which only a few of the cowboys could be in attendance. Britt was evasive and aloof. Trouble out on the range! But the event was a happy one for Skylark and Ann. Only after they had gone, and Holly was left alone, did the blank abrupt break seem unendurable.

  That night Holly heard the cowboys making the welkin ring around the cabin of the newly wedded pair. Not till morning did these antics cease. But the next day Skylark went back to riding the range and Ann took up the manifold duties of a young housekeeper. Only for Holly was there an emptiness, a desolation, a complexity far removed from the simple happiness of the Western couple.

  It seemed to Holly that self-preservation lay in a reversion to the ambition of the preceding summer—to take up her father’s work and learn it, to be not only mistress of Don Carlos’ Rancho but a worthy daughter of a plain cattleman. Britt had not aided her in this laudable desire, nor had Frayne. Even Brazos, than whom no cowboy could be more ruthlessly frank, had become evasive and elusive. They had sought to spare her the sordid and distressing details of range life. Holly rebelled against this, and especially against the truth she forced from herself—that she had been too soft, too aristocratic, too gentle and girlish to stand up under the hard knocks of the frontier. She admitted it. She scorned it. Her father had been mostly to blame. In his strange need to educate the Spanish out of her he had kept her away from the West, at the formative time of youth and adolescence. And now she was neither Spanish nor Western, nor Southern, nor anything but a highly sensitive, passionate young woman, terribly in love, and despairing of the future.

  But Holly did not now torture herself long with indecision. Her spirit rose in revolt, not against the times, nor the trick fate and love had played her, but against that in her which was not of the West. She would know it, she would do battle with it, she would conquer it. Wherefore she magnified all the prophecies Buff Belmet and Britt had ever uttered, and steeled herself against the invisible. But it was that invisible which tortured Holly. She had imagination; she was ignorant, however, of range tendencies, complexities, possibilities. How could she be otherwise when her foreman, her cowboys, when even the man she adored turned his back upon her, and no one would explain and teach her the things she needed to know? Holly forgave them, for they were indeed the knights of the range. She made a resolution, however, that she would be less of a queen and more of a woman.

  Holly went out into the spring sunshine. She rode. She walked. Britt stormed at her, and she obeyed. Brazos swore at her, and she listened. Frayne transfixed her with his piercing eyes, and she smiled. The wind stung her white cheeks; the dust choked her, the chill penetrated through her fleece-lined coat. She often stayed hours with Ann and learned to cook, to bake, to sew. She made friends with Conchita and learned much beside gossip from that range belle. She frequented the trading-post to converse with traders, soldiers, Indians, Mexicans, strangers—with any and everyone she met. She went often to the bunk-house, and the cowboys began to look forward to her coming. They betrayed their solicitude. They did not understand, but they felt, they saw the change in her. Yet, of them all, Ride-’Em Jackson was the only one who did not evade her, deceive her. The negro was as simple as a child and he could not lie to her. Holly came to know why Britt or Brazos or Jim always sauntered near when she talked with Jackson. They were aligned against her. They would die for her, but refused to sicken her or blanch her cheek with the truth.