The Bandit of Hell's Bend - Edgar Rice Burroughs (reading tree .txt) 📗

A WEEK or ten days after Elias Henders’ funeral the Wainright buckboard drew into the Bar Y ranch yard and the Wainrights, senior and junior, alighted and approached the house. They found Diana in the office working on the books, which she had kept for her father when they were without a bookkeeper, which was the case at present.

She greeted them politely, but without marked cordiality. It was the first time that she had encountered either of them since her father’s death, having refused to see the younger man on her return to the camp with Elias Hender’s body.

“We been calc’latin’ to drive ever for several days past, Miss Henders,” said the elder man. “Thought mebby you might want some advice or suthin’. Anything we can do, we’re at both at your service.”

“That’s very kind of you, indeed, I’m sure,” replied the girl; “but really I have so many good friends here that I couldn’t think of inconveniencing you. Everyone has been so kind and considerate.”

“Well, they ain’t no harm in offerin’,” he continued. “Anything we can do, you know. If it’s a little matter of money to tide you over till the estate’s settled, why, just call on Jefferson Wainright-he’s got a lot and he ain’t stingy either.”

“There is nothing, thank you,” she said, with just the faintest tinge of asperity.

He rose slowly from his chair and shoved his fat hands into his pockets.

“I reckon I’ll walk around a bit,” he said. “I calc’late that you young folks got suthin’ to say to one another,” and he winked ponderously at them as he waddled through the doorway.

There was a strained silence for several minutes after he left. Jefferson Wainright, Jr., finally, after clearing his throat two or three times, broke it.

“The governor means all right,” he said. “We’d really like to be of service to you, and after the-the talk we had that last night before-before your father was killed-you know-why, I hoped I might have the right to help you, Diana.”

She drew herself up very straight and stiff. “I think we had better forget that, Mr. Wainright,” she said.

“But you promised me an answer,” he insisted.

“After what happened I should think you would know what the answer must be without being subjected to the humiliation of being told in words.”

“Do you mean that you are blaming me, too, like the men did, for going for help. You would all have been killed if I hadn’t. I think I did just the sensible thing,” he concluded, half-defiantly.

“Yes, I suppose so,” she replied icily, “and Hal Colby did a very silly thing staying and risking his life for Dad and me.”

“I think you’re mighty unfair, Diana,” he insisted, “and the way it turned out only goes to prove that I was right. I met Bull and that Texas person less than halfway to camp and got them there in time.”

“If they had been as sensible as you they would have gone on to camp for more reinforcements, as you did, but like most of our boys out here, Mr. Wainright, they haven’t much sense and so they nearly rode their horses down to get to us-only two of them, remember, after you had told them that we were surrounded by a hundred Indians.”

“Oh, pshaw, I think you might be reasonable and make some allowance for a fellow,” he begged. “I’ll admit I was a little excited and maybe I did do the wrong thing, but it’s all new to me out here. I’d never seen a wild Indian before and I thought I was doing right to go for help.

“Can’t you forgive me, Diana, and give me another chance? If you’ll marry me I’ll take you away from this God-forsaken country back where there are no Indians.”

“Mr. Wainright, I have no wish to offend you, but you might as well know once for all that if you were the last man on earth I would never marry you-I could not marry such a coward, and you are a coward. You would be just as much of a coward back East if danger threatened. Some of our boys are from the East-Hal Colby was born in Vermont-and the day that you ran away was his first experience, too, with hostile Indians, and if you want another reason why I couldn’t marry you-the first and biggest reasonI’ll give it to you.”

Her voice was low and level, like her father’s had been on the rare occasions that he had been moved by anger, but the tone was keen-edged and cutting. “I feel now, and I shall always feel as long as I live, that had you remained instead of running away we might have held them off and Dad would not have been uselessly sacrificed.”

She had risen while, she spoke, and he rose too, standing silently for a moment after she had concluded. Then he turned and walked toward the door. At the threshold he paused and turned toward her.

“I hope you will never regret your decision,” he said. The tone seemed to carry a threat.

“I assure you that I shall never. Good day, Mr. Wainright.”

After he had gone the girl shuddered and sank down into a chair. She wished Hal Colby was there. She wanted someone to comfort her and to give her that sense of safety under masculine protection that her father’s presence had always afforded.

Why couldn’t all men be like Hal and Bull? When she thought of brave men she always thought of Bull, too. How wonderful they had all been that day-Hal and Bull and Pete. Rough, uncouth they often were; worn and soiled and careless their apparel; afraid of nothing, man, beast or the devil; risking their lives joyously; joking with death; and yet they had been as gentle as women when they took her back to camp and all during the long, terrible journey home, when one of the three had always been within call every minute of the days and nights.

Of the three Bull had surprised her most, for previously he had always seemed the hardest and most calloused, and possessing fewer of the finer sensibilities of sympathy and tenderness; but of them all he had been the most thoughtful and considerate. It had been he who had sent her ahead with Colby that she might not see them lash her father’s body to the horse; it had been he who had covered all that remained of Elias Henders with the slickers from his saddle and Pete’s that she might not be shocked by the sight of her father’s body rocking from side to side with the swaying motion of the horse; and it was Bull who had ridden all night to far-away ranches and brought back two buckboards early the next morning to carry her Dad and her more comfortably on the homeward journey. He had spoken kindly to her in an altered, softened voice, and he had insisted that she eat and keep her strength when she had wanted to forget food.

But the funeral over she had seen nothing more of him, for he had been sent back to the round-up to ride with it for the last few remaining days, while Hal Colby remained at the ranch to help her to plan for the future and gather together the stray ends that are left flying when even the most methodical of masters releases his grip for the last time.

She sat musing after Wainright left the room, the clock upon the wall above her father’s desk ticking as it had for years just as though this terrible thing had not happened just as though her father were still sitting in his accustomed chair, instead of lying out there in the sandy, desolate little graveyard above Hendersville, where the rocks that protected the scattered sleepers from the coyotes offered sanctuary to the lizard and the rattle-snake.

Her revery was disturbed by the fall of