The Quirt by B. M. Bower (good novels to read .TXT) 📗

sitting down eating your supper, maybe, and you feel something say words in your brain? Like you know something talks to you and then quits."

Lone gave Swan a long, measuring look, and Swan laughed uneasily.

"That sounds crazy. But it's true, what something tells me in my brain. I go and look, and by golly, it's there just like the words tell me."

Lone straightened in the saddle. "You better come clean, Swan, and tell the whole thing. What was it? Don't talk in circles. What words did you feel—in your brain?" In spite of himself, Lone felt as he had when the girl had talked to him and called him Charlie.

[Pg 75]Swan closed the gate behind him with steady hands. His lips were pressed firmly together, as if he had definitely made up his mind to something. Lone was impressed somehow with Swan's perfect control of his speech, his thoughts, his actions. But he was puzzled rather than anything else, and when Swan turned, facing him, Lone's bewilderment did not lessen.

"I'll tell you. It's when I'm sitting down to eat my supper. I'm just reaching out my hand like this, to get my coffee. And something says in my head, 'It's a lie. I don't ride backwards. Go look at my saddle. There's blood——' And that's all. It's like the words go far away so I can't hear any more. So I eat my supper, and then I get the lantern and I go look. You come with me, Lone. I'll show you."

Without a word Lone dismounted and followed Swan into a small shed beside the stable, where a worn stock saddle hung suspended from a crosspiece, a rawhide string looped over the horn. Lone did not ask whose saddle it was, nor did Swan name the owner. There was no need.

Swan took the saddle and swung it around so that the right side was toward them. It was what is called a full-stamped saddle, with the[Pg 76] popular wild-rose design on skirts and cantle. Much hard use and occasional oilings had darkened the leather to a rich, red brown, marred with old scars and scratches and the stains of many storms.

"Blood is hard to find when it's raining all night," Swan observed, speaking low as one does in the presence of death. "But if somebody is bleeding and falls off a horse slow, and catches hold of things and tries like hell to hang on——" He lifted the small flap that covered the cinch ring and revealed a reddish, flaked stain. Phlegmatically he wetted his finger tip on his tongue, rubbed the stain and held up his finger for Lone to see. "That's a damn funny place for blood, when a man is dragging on the ground," he commented drily. "And something else is damn funny, Lone."

He lifted the wooden stirrup and touched with his finger the rowel marks. "That is on the front part," he said. "I could swear in court that Fred's left foot was twisted—that's damn funny, Lone. I don't see men ride backwards, much."

Lone turned on him and struck the stirrup from his hand. "I think you better forget it,"[Pg 77] he said fiercely. "He's dead—it can't help him any to——" He stopped and pulled himself together. "Swan, you take a fool's advice and don't tell anybody else about feeling words talk in your head. They'll have you in the bug-house at Blackfoot, sure as you live." He looked at the saddle, hesitated, looked again at Swan, who was watching him. "That blood most likely got there when Fred was packing a deer in from the hills. And marks on them old oxbow stirrups don't mean a damn thing but the need of a new pair, maybe." He forced a laugh and stepped outside the shed. "Just shows you, Swan, that imagination and being alone all the time can raise Cain with a fellow. You want to watch yourself."

Swan followed him out, closing the door carefully behind him. "By golly, I'm watching out now," he assented thoughtfully. "You don't tell anybody, Lone."

"No, I won't tell anybody—and I'd advise you not to," Lone repeated grimly. "Just keep those thoughts outa your head, Swan. They're bad medicine."

He mounted John Doe and rode away, his eyes downcast, his quirt slapping absently the[Pg 78] weeds along the trail. It was not his business, and yet—— Lone shook himself together and put John Doe into a lope. He had warned Swan, and he could do no more.

Halfway to the Quirt he met Lorraine riding along the trail. She would have passed him with no sign of recognition, but Lone lifted his hat and stopped. Lorraine looked at him, rode on a few steps and turned. "Did you wish to speak about something?" she asked impersonally.

Lone felt the flush in his cheeks, which angered him to the point of speaking curtly. "Yes. I found your purse where you dropped it that night you were lost. I was bringing it over to you. My name's Morgan. I'm the man that found you and took you in to the ranch."

"Oh." Lorraine looked at him steadily. "You're the one they call Loney?"

"When they're feeling good toward me. I'm Lone Morgan. I went back to find your grip—you said you left it under a bush, but the world's plumb full of bushes. I found your purse, though."

"Thank you so much. I must have been an awful nuisance, but I was so scared—and things were terribly mixed in my mind. I didn't even[Pg 79] have sense enough to tell you what ranch I was trying to find, did I? So you took me to the wrong one, and I was a week there before I found it out. And then they were perfectly lovely about it and brought me—home." She turned the purse over and over in her hands, looking at it without much interest. She seemed in no hurry to ride on, which gave Lone courage.

"There's something I'd like to say," he began, groping for words that would make his meaning plain without telling too much. "I hope you won't mind my telling you. You were kinda out of your head when I found you, and you said something about seeing a man shot and——"

"Oh!" Lorraine looked up at him, looked through him, he thought, with those brilliant eyes of hers. "Then I did tell——"

"I just wanted to say," Lone interrupted her, "that I knew all the time it was just a nightmare. I never mentioned it to anybody, and you'll forget all about it, I hope. You didn't tell any one else, did you?"

He looked up at her again and found her studying him curiously. "You're not the man I saw," she said, as if she were satisfying herself on that point. "I've wondered since—but I was sure,[Pg 80] too, that I had seen it. Why mustn't I tell any one?"

Lone did not reply at once. The girl's eyes were disconcertingly direct, her voice and her manner disturbed him with their judicial calmness, so at variance with the wildness he remembered.

"Well, it's hard to explain," he said at last. "You're strange to this country, and you don't know all the ins and outs of—things. It wouldn't do any good to you or anybody else, and it might do a lot of harm." His eyes nicked her face with a wistful glance. "You don't know me—I really haven't got any right to ask or expect you to trust me. But I wish you would, to the extent of forgetting that you saw—or thought you saw—anything that night in Rock City."

Lorraine shivered and covered her eyes swiftly with one hand. His words had brought back too sharply that scene. But she shook off the emotion and faced him again.

"I saw a man murdered," she cried. "I wasn't sure afterwards; sometimes I thought I had dreamed it. But I was sure I saw it. I saw the horse go by, running—and you want me to keep still about that? What harm could it do to[Pg 81] tell? Perhaps it's true—perhaps I did see it all. I might think you were trying to cover up something—only, you're not the man I saw—or thought I saw."

"No, of course I'm not. You dreamed the whole thing, and the way you talked to me was so wild, folks would say you're crazy if they heard you tell it. You're a stranger here, Miss Hunter, and—your father is not as popular in this country as he might be. He's got enemies that would be glad of the chance to stir up trouble for him. You—just dreamed all that. I'm asking you to forget a bad dream, that's all, and not go telling it to other folks."

For some time Lorraine did not answer. The horses conversed with sundry nose-rubbings, nibbled idly at convenient brush tips, and wondered no doubt why their riders were so silent. Lone tried to think of some stronger argument, some appeal that would reach the girl without frightening her or causing her to distrust him. But he did not know what more he could say without telling her what must not be told.

"Just how would it make trouble for my father?" Lorraine asked at last. "I can't believe you'd ask me to help cover up a crime, but[Pg 82] it seems hard to believe that a nightmare would cause any great commotion. And why is my father unpopular?"

"Well, you don't know this country," Lone parried inexpertly. "It's all right in some ways, and in some ways it could be a lot improved. Folks haven't got much to talk about. They go around gabbling their heads off about every little thing, and adding onto it until you can't recognize your own remarks after they've been peddled for a week. You've maybe seen places like that."

"Oh, yes." Lorraine's eyes lighted with a smile. "Take a movie studio, for instance."

"Yes. Well, you being a stranger, you would get all the worst of it. I just thought I'd tell you; I'd hate to see you misunderstood by folks around here. I—I feel kinda responsible for you; I'm the one that found you."

Lorraine's eyes twinkled. "Well, I'm glad to know one person in the country who doesn't gabble his head off. You haven't answered any of my questions, and you've made me feel as if you'd found a dangerous, wild woman that morning. It isn't very flattering, but I think you're honest, anyway."

[Pg 83]Lone smiled for the first time, and she found his smile pleasant. "I'm no angel," he disclaimed modestly, "and most folks think I could be improved on a whole lot. But I'm honest in one way. I'm thinking about what's best for you, this time."

"I'm terribly grateful," Lorraine laughed. "I shall take great care not to go all around the country telling people my dreams. I can see that it wouldn't make me awfully popular." Then she sobered. "Mr. Morgan, that was a horrible kind of—nightmare. Why, even last night I woke up shivering, just imagining it all over again."

"It was sure horrible the way you talked about it," Lone assured her. "It's because you were sick, I reckon. I wish you'd tell me as close as you can where you left that grip of yours. You said it was under a bush where a rabbit was sitting. I'd like to find the grip—but I'm afraid that rabbit has done moved!"

"Oh, Mr. Warfield and I found it, thank you. The rabbit had moved, but I sort of remembered how the road had looked along there, and we hunted until we discovered the place. Dad has driven in after my other luggage to-day—and I[Pg 84] believe I must be getting home. I was only out for a little ride."

She thanked him again for the trouble he had taken and rode away. Lone turned off the trail and, picking his way around rough outcroppings of rock, and across unexpected little gullies, headed straight for the ford across Granite Creek and home. Brit Hunter's girl, he was thinking, was even nicer than he had pictured her. And that she could believe in the nightmare was a vast relief.

[Pg 85]

CHAPTER SEVEN THE MAN AT WHISPER

Brit Hunter finished washing the breakfast dishes and put a stick of wood into the broken old cook-stove that had served him and Frank for fifteen years and was feeling its age. Lorraine's breakfast was in the oven, keeping warm. Brit looked in, tested the heat with his gnarled hand to make sure that the sour-dough biscuits would not be dried to crusts, and closed the door upon them and the bacon and fried potatoes. Frank Johnson had the horses saddled and it was time to go, yet