The Free Range. Sullivan Francis William

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ its opportunities.

      When she returned to the porch Juliet had on a plain white dress with pink ribbons at elbows, neck, and waist. Larkin, who had always thrilled at her splendid physical vigor, found himself more than ever under the spell of her luxuriant vitality.

      Her great dark eyes were remarkably lustrous and expressive, her black hair waved back from her brown face into a great braided coil, her features were not pretty so much as noble. Her figure, with its limber curves, was pliant and graceful in any position or emergency – the result of years in the saddle. Her feet and hands were small, the latter being firm but infinitely gentle in their touch.

      “Well, have you forgotten all your Eastern education?” Larkin asked, smiling, as she sat down. “Have you reverted to your original untamed condition?”

      “No, indeed, Bud. I have a reputation to keep up in that respect. The fact that I have had an Eastern education has made our punchers so proud that they can’t be lived with when they go to town, and lord it over everybody.”

      “I suppose they all want to marry you?”

      “Yes, singly or in lots, and sometimes I’m sorry it can’t be done, I love them all so much. But tell me, Bud, what brings you out West in general and here in particular?”

      “Probably you don’t know that a year and a half ago my father died,” and Larkin’s face shadowed for a moment with retrospection. “Well, he did, and left me most of his estate. I was sick of it there, and I vowed I would pull up stakes and start somewhere by myself. So I went up to Montana in the vicinity of the Musselshell Forks and bought a ranch and some stock.”

      “Cattle?”

      “No, sheep. The best merino I ever saw – ”

      “Bud Larkin! You’re not a sheepman?”

      “Yes, ma’am, and a menace to a large number of cowmen, your father among them.”

      The girl sank back and allowed him to relate the story of his adventures up to the present time, including the interview with Beef. At the description of that she smiled grimly; and he, noting the fact, told himself that it would take a masterly character to subdue that free, wild pride.

      “Now, Julie,” he concluded, “do me the favor of instilling reason into your father. I’ve done my best and we have parted without murder, but that’s all. I’ve got to have a friend at court or I will be ruined before I commence.”

      The girl was silent for a few minutes and sat looking down at her slippered feet.

      “Bud,” she said at last, “you’ve never known me to tell anything but the truth, and I’m going to tell it to you now. I will be your friend in everything except where you ask me to yield my loyalty to my father and his interests. He is the most wonderful father a girl ever had, and if he were to say that black was white, I should probably swear to it if he asked me to.”

      “I admire you for that,” said Bud genuinely, although all his hopes in this powerful ally went glimmering. “Let’s not talk shop any longer. It’s too good just to see you to think about anything but that.”

      So, for a while, they reminisced of the days of their former friendship, by tacit agreement avoiding any reference to intimate things. And Larkin felt spring up in him the old love that he had convinced himself was dead; so that he added to his first resolution to succeed on the range, a second, that he would, in the end, conquer Juliet Bissell.

      The thought was pleasing, for it meant another struggle, another outlet for the energies and activities that had so long lain dormant in him. And with the undaunted courage of youth he looked eagerly toward the battle that should win this radiant girl.

      But for the present he knew he must not betray himself by word, look or action; other things of greater moment must be settled.

      At last, as they talked, the cook, a long-suffering Chinaman, seized a huge brass bell and rang it with all his might, standing in the door of the cook house.

      There was an instant response in the wild whoop of the cowboys who had been suffering the pangs of starvation for the past half-hour.

      “Of course you must come to our private table, Bud,” said Juliet. “I want you to see father’s other side.” So they rose and went in the front way.

      The ranch house had been planned so that to the right of the entrance was the living-room, and back of that the dining-room. To the left three smaller rooms had been made into sleeping apartments. At the back of the structure and extending across the width of it was a large room that, in the early days of the Bar T, had served as the bunk-house for the cow punchers.

      This had now been changed to the mess-room for them, while the family, with the addition of Stelton, the foreman, used the smaller private room. Owing to the large increase in the number of Bar T punchers a special bunk-house had been built in the rear of the main structure.

      At table Larkin for the first time met Mrs. Bissell, who proved to be a typical early cowman’s wife, thin, overworked, and slightly vinegary of disposition, despite the fact that she had at one time in her life been the belle of a cowtown, and had been won from beneath the ready .45’s of a number of rivals.

      At Bud’s entrance Stelton grunted and scowled, and generally showed himself ill-pleased that Juliet should have known the visitor. On the other hand, as the girl had promised, Beef Bissell, for years the terror of the range, displayed a side that the sheepman would never have suspected. His voice became gentle, his laugh softened, his language purified, and he showed, by many little attentions, the unconscious chivalry that worship of a good woman brings to the surface.

      For her part, the girl appraised this devotion at its true value and never failed in the little feminine thoughtfulnesses that appeal so strongly to a worried and busy man.

      That Stelton should be at the table at all surprised Bud, for it was not the habit of foremen to eat away from the punchers. But here the fact was the result of a former necessity when Bissell, hard-pressed, had called his foreman into consultation at meal times.

      Old Bissell proved himself a more genial host than business rival, and when he had learned of Larkin and his daughter’s former friendship, he forgot sheep for the moment and took an interest in the man. Mrs. Bissell sat open-mouthed while Bud told of the glories of Chicago in the early eighties, and never once mentioned her famous visit to St. Paul, so overcome was she with the tales this young man related.

      Everyone was at his or her ease when the rapid tattoo of hoofs was heard, and a horse and rider drew up abruptly at the corral. One of the punchers from the rear dining-room went out to meet him and presently appeared sheepishly in the doorway where Bissell could see him.

      “Is there a Mr. Larkin here?” asked the puncher.

      “Yes,” said Bud, pushing back his chair.

      “There’s a stranger out here that ’lows he wants to see you.”

      “Send him in here and give him something to eat, Shorty,” sang out Bissell. “If he’s a friend of Larkin’s, he’d better have dinner with him. And, Shorty, tell that Chinaman to rustle another place here pronto!”

      As for Bud Larkin, he was at a total loss to know who his visitor might be. With a sudden twinge of fear he thought that perhaps Hard-winter Sims, his chief herder, had pursued him with disastrous information from the flocks. Wondering, he awaited the visitor’s appearance.

      The СКАЧАТЬ