Bucky O'Connor: A Tale of the Unfenced Border by William MacLeod Raine (learn to read books .txt) 📗

his last statement Bucky's eyes began to open with a new light. “Good heavens! It can't be possible. You're not Webb Mackenzie's little girl, are you?”

She did not answer him in words, but from her neck she slipped a chain and handed it to him. On the chain hung a locket.

The ranger struck a match and examined the trinket. “It's the very missing locket. See! Here's the other one. Compare them together.” He touched the spring and it opened, but the match was burned out and he had to light another. “Here's the mine map that has been lost all these years. How did you get this? Have you always had it? And how long have you known that you were Frances Mackenzie?”

His questions tumbled out one upon another in his excitement.

She laughed, answering him categorically. “I don't know, for sure. Yes, at least a great many years. Less than a week.”

“But—I don't understand—”

“And won't until you give me a chance to do some of the talking,” she interrupted dryly.

“That's right. I reckon I am getting off left foot first. It's your powwow now,” he conceded.

“So long as I can remember exactly I have always lived with the man Hardman and his wife. But before that I can vaguely recall something different. It has always seemed like a kind of fairyland, for I was a very little tot then. But one of the things I seem to remember was a sweet, kind-eyed mother and a big, laughing father. Then, too, there were horses and lots of cows. That is about all, except that the chain around my neck seemed to have some connection with my early life. That's why I always kept it very carefully, and, after one of the lockets broke, I still kept it and the funny-looking paper inside of it.”

“I don't understand why Hardman didn't take the paper,” he interrupted.

“I suppose he did, and when he discovered that it held only half the secret of the mine he probably put it back in the locket. I see you have the other part.”

“It was lost at the place where the robbers waited to hold up the T. P. Limited. Probably you lost it first and one of the robbers found it.”

“Probably,” she said, in a queer voice.

“What was the first clue your father had had for many years about his little girl. He happened to be at Aravaipa the day you and I first met. I guess he took a fancy to me, for he asked me to take this case up for him and see if I couldn't locate you. I ran Hardman down and made him tell me the whole story. But he lied about some of it, for he told me you were dead.”

“He is a born liar,” the girl commented. “Well, to get on with my story. Anderson, or Hardman, as he now calls himself, except when he uses his stage name of Cavallado, went into the show business and took me with him. When I was a little bit of a girl he used to use me for all sorts of things, such as a target for his knife throwing and to sell medicine to the audience. Lots of people would buy because I was such a morsel of a creature, and I suppose he found me a drawing card. We moved all over the country for years. I hated the life. But what could I do?”

“You poor little lamb,” murmured the man. “And when did you find out who you were?”

“I heard you talking to him the night you took him back to Epitaph, and then I began to piece things together. You remember you went over the whole story with him again just before we reached the town.”

“And you knew it was you I was talking about?”

“I didn't know. But when you mentioned the locket and the map, I knew. Then it seemed to me that since this man Henderson had lost so many years of his life trying to save me I must do something for him. So I asked you to take me with you. I had been a boy so long I didn't think you would know the difference, and you did not. If I hadn't dressed as a girl that time you would not know yet.”

“Maybe, and maybe not,” he smiled. “Point is, I do know, and it makes a heap of difference to me.”

“Yes, I know,” she said hurriedly. “I'm more trouble now.”

“That ain't it,” he was beginning, when a thought brought him up short. As the daughter of Webb Mackenzie this girl was no longer a penniless outcast, but the heiress of one-half interest in the big Rocking Chair Ranch, with its fifteen thousand head of cattle. As the first he had a perfect right to love her and to ask her to marry him, but as the latter—well, that was quite a different affair. He had not a cent to bless himself with outside of his little ranch and his salary, and, though he might not question his own motives under such circumstances, there would be plenty who would question them for him. He was an independent young man as one could find in a long day's ride, and his pride rose up to padlock his lips.

She looked across at him in shy surprise, for all the eagerness had in an instant been sponged from his face. With a hard, impassive countenance he dropped the hand he had seized and turned away.

“You were saying—” she suggested.

“I reckon I've forgot what it was. It doesn't matter, anyhow.”

She was hurt, and deeply. It was all very well for her to try her little wiles to delay him, but in her heart she longed to hear the words he had been about to say. It had been very sweet to know that this brown, handsome son of Arizona loved her, very restful to know that for the first time in her life she could trustfully let her weakness lean on the strength of another. And, more than either, though she sometimes smilingly pretended to deny it to herself, was the ultimate fact that she loved him. His voice was music to her, his presence joy. He brought with him sunshine, and peace, and happiness.

He was always so reliable, so little the victim of his moods. What could have come over him now to change him in that swift instant? Was she to blame? Had she unknowingly been at fault? Or was there something in her story that had chilled him? It was characteristic of her that it was herself she doubted and not him; that it never occurred to her that her hero had feet of clay like other men.

She felt her heart begin to swell, and choked back a sob. It wrung him to hear the little breath catch, but he was a man, strong-willed and resolute. Though he dug his finger nails into his palms till the flesh was cut he would not give way to his desire.

“You're not angry at me—Bucky?” she asked softly.

“No, I'm not angry at you.” His voice was cold because he dared not trust himself to let his tenderness creep into it.

“I haven't done