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

“You sent fer me, Miss?” asked Bull, as he stepped into the office the following morning, his hat in his hand, his chaps loose-buckled about his trim hips, his two big six-guns a trifle forward against the need for quick action, the black silk handkerchief falling over the blue shirt that stretched to his deep chest, and his thick, black hair pushed back in -an unconscious, half pompadour.

From silver-mounted spurs to heavy hat band he was typical of the West of his day. There was no item of his clothing or equipment the possession of which was not prompted by utilitarian considerations. There was ornamentation, but it was obviously secondary to the strict needs of his calling. Nothing that he wore was shabby, yet it all showed use to an extent that made each article seem a part of the man, as though he had been molded into them. Nothing protruded with stiff awkwardness-even the heavy guns appeared to fit into accustomed hollows and became a part of the man.

The girl, swinging about in her chair to face him, felt a suggestion of stricture in her throat, and she felt mean and small and contemptible as she looked into the eyes of the man she knew loved her and contemplated the thing she was about to do; yet she did not hesitate now that she had, after a night of sleepless deliberation, committed herself to it.

“Yes, I sent for you, Bull,” she replied. “The stage was held up again yesterday as you know. Mack won’t be fit for work again for a long time and I’ve got to have someone to guard the bullion shipments-the fellow who came down with it yesterday has quit. He said he was too young to commit suicide.”

“Yes’m.” said Bull.

“I don’t want you to take any chances, Bull-I would rather lose the gold than have-you hurt.”

“I won’t get hurt, Miss.”

“You don’t mind doing it?” she asked.

“O’ course I’m a puncher,” he said; “but I don’t mind doin’ it-not fer you. I told you once thet I’d do anything fer you, Miss, an’ I wasn’t jest talkin’ through my hat.”

“You don’t do everything I ask you to, Bull,” she said, smiling.

“What don’t I do?” he demanded.

“You still call me Miss, and I hate it. You’re more like a brother, Bull, and Miss sounds so formal.” It must have been a woman who first discovered the art of making fire.

A shadow of pain crossed his dark countenance. “Don’t ask too much of me, Miss,” he said quietly as he turned on his heel and started for the doorway. “I go up to the mine today, I suppose?” he threw back over his shoulder.

“Yes, today,” she said, and he was gone.

For a long time Diana Henders was troubled. The assignment she had given Bull troubled her, for it was a tacit admission that she gave credence to Colby’s suspicions. The pain that she had seen reflected in Bull’s face troubled her, as did his parting words and the quiet refusal to call her Diana. She wondered if these had been prompted by a feeling of pique that his love was not returned, or compunction because of a guilty knowledge that he had betrayed her and her father.

Hal Colby had told her that morning of the bag of gold dust Bull had displayed in the poker game the night before, and that troubled her too, for it seemed to bear out more than anything else the suspicions that were forming around him-suspicions that she could see, in the light of bits of circumstantial evidence, were far from groundless.

“I won’t believe it!” she said half aloud. “I won’t believe it!” and then she went for a ride.

All the men had left but Hal Colby and Texas Pete when she reached the corrals; but she did not feel like riding with Hal Colby that morning and so she rode with Texas Pete, much to that young man’s surprise and rapture.

The days dragged along and became weeks, the stage made its two trips a week, the bullion shipments came through regularly and safely and there were no holdups, and then one day Maurice B. Corson and Lillian Manill arrived. The stage took the Bar Y road that day and pulled up before the gate of the ranch house just as Diana Henders and Hal Colby were returning from a trip to the West Ranch. Diana saw Lillian Manill for the first time in her life. The eastern girl was seated between Bill Gatlin, the driver, and Bull. All three were laughing. Evidently they had been enjoying one another’s company.

Diana could not but notice it because it was rarely that Bull laughed. It was Bull who stepped to the wheel and helped her to alight.

Maurice B. Corson emerged from the inside of the coach, through the windows of which Diana could see three other passengers, two of whom she recognized as the Wainrights, and then she dismounted and ran forward to greet her cousin, a handsome, dark-haired girl of about her own age.

Bull, still smiling, raised his hat to Diana. She nodded to him, briefly. For some reason she was vexed with him, but why she did not know. Bull and Colby ran to the boot and dragged off the Corson-Manill baggage, while Lillian presented Corson to Diana. Corson was a young man-a typical New Yorker-in his early thirties.

“Git a move on there, Bull,” shouted Gatlin, “or they’ll think I ben held up agin.”

“I reckon The Black Coyote’s gone out o’ business, fer a while,” said Colby, shooting a quick look at Diana.

Instantly the girl’s loyalty was in arms. “He’s afraid to try it while Bull’s guarding the gold,” she said.

“How much longer you goin’ to keep me on the job?” asked Bull, as he clambered to the seat of the already moving coach. “Mack looks pretty all-fired healthy to me.”

“Just another week or two, Bull,” Diana shouted after him as the stage careened away at full gallop.

“Isn’t he wonderful!” exclaimed Miss Manill. “A real cowboy and the first one I ever talked to!”

“Oh, there are lots of them here,” said-Diana, “just as nice as Bull.”

“So I see,” replied Lillian Manill, smiling frankly at Hal Colby, “but Bull, as you call him, is the only one I’ve met.”

“Pardon me!” exclaimed Diana. “This is Mr. Colby, Miss Manill.”

“Oh, you’re the foreman-Mr. Bull told me-how exciting!”

“I’ll bet he didn’t tell you nothin’ good about me,” said Colby.

“He told me about your heroic defense of Diana and my poor uncle,” explained Lillian.

Colby flushed. “If it hadn’t ben fer Bull we’d all ‘a’ ben killed,” he said, ashamed.

“Why, he didn’t tell me that,” exclaimed the girl. “He never said he was in the battle, at all.”

“That is just like Bull,” said Diana.

They were walking toward the house, Diana and Colby leading their ponies, and the two Easterners looking interestedly at the various buildings and corrals over which hung the glamour of that irresistible romance which the West and a cattle-ranch always hold for the uninitiated-and for the initiated too, if the truth were but known.

“It is just too wonderful, Mr. Colby, ” Lillian confided to the big foreman walking at her side; “but doesn’t it get awful lonesome?”

“We don’t notice it,” he replied. “You know we keep pretty busy all day with a big outfit like this and when night comes around we’re ready to turn in-we don’t have no time to git lonesome.”

“Is this a very big outfit, as you call it?” she asked.

“I reckon they ain’t none much bigger in the territory,” he replied.

“And to think that you are foreman of it! What a wonderful man you must be!”

“Oh, it ain’t nothin’,” he assured her, but he was vastly pleased Here, indeed, was a young lady of discernment.

“You big men of the great out-doors are always so modest,” she told him, a statement for which he could find no reply. As a matter of fact, though he had never thought of it before, he realized the justice of her assertion, and fully agreed with her.

She was looking now at the trim figure of her cousin, walking ahead of them with Corson. “How becoming that costume is to Diana,” she remarked; “and I suppose she rides wonderfully.”

“She shore does-an’ then some,” he assured her.

“Oh, how I wish I could ride! Do you suppose I could learn?”

“Easy, Miss. It ain’t nothin’, oncet you know how.”

“Do you suppose someone would teach me?” She looked up at him, archly.

“I’d be mighty proud to larn you, Miss.”

“Oh, would you? How wonderful! Can we start right away, tomorrow?”

“You bet we can; but you can’t ride in them things,” he added, looking ruefully at her New York traveling costume.

She laughed gaily. “Oh, my! I didn’t expect to,” she cried. “I am not such a silly as that. I brought my habit with me, of course.”

“Well, I suppose it’s all right,” he said politely; “but you don’t have to bring no habits to Arizony from nowheres-we mostly have enough right here, such as they be-good an’ bad.”

Again her laugh rang out. “You big, funny man!” she cried. “You are poking fun at me just because you think I am a tendershoe-trying to make me believe that you don’t know what a riding habit is. Aren’t you ashamed of yourselfteasing poor little me?”

They were passing the bunkhouse at the time, where the boys, having scrubbed for supper, were squatting about on their heels watching the newcomers with frank curiosity. After they had passed Shorty gave Texas Pete a shove that sent him sprawling on the ground.