The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine

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      Chapter VIII

       Miss-Going-on-Eighteen

       Table of Contents

      Time had been when the range was large enough for all, when every man's cattle might graze at will from horizon to horizon. But with the push of settlement to the frontier had come a change. The feeding ground became overstocked. One outfit elbowed another, and lines began to be drawn between the runs of different owners. Water holes were seized and fenced, with or without due process of law.

      With the establishment of forest reserves a new policy dominated the government. Sanderson had been one of the first to avail himself of it by leasing the public demesne for his stock. Later, learning that the mountain parks were to be thrown open as a pasturage for sheep, he had bought three thousand and driven them up, having first arranged terms with the forestry service.

      Buck Weaver, fighting the government reserve policy with all his might, resented fiercely the attitude of Sanderson. A sharp, bitter quarrel had resulted, and had left a smoldering bad feeling that flamed at times into open warfare. Upon the wholesome Malpais country had fallen the bitterness of a sheep and cattle feud.

      The riders of the Twin Star outfit had thrice raided the Sanderson flocks. Lambing sheep had been run cruelly. One herd had been clubbed over a precipice, another decimated with poison. In return, the herders shot and hamstrung Twin Star cows. A herder was held up and beaten by cowboys. Next week a vaquero galloped home to the Twin Star ranch with a bullet through his leg. This was the situation at the time when the owner of the big ranch brought Phyllis a prisoner to its hospitality.

      Nothing could have been more pat to his liking. He was, in large measure, the force behind the law in San Miguel county. The sheriff whom he had elected to office would be conveniently deaf to any illegality there might be in his holding the girl, would if necessary give him an order to hold her there until further notice. The attempt to assassinate him would serve as excuse enough for a proceeding even more highhanded than this. Her relatives could scarce appeal to the law, since the law would then step in and send her to the penitentiary. He could use her position as a hostage to force her stiff-necked father to come to terms.

      But it was characteristic of the man that his reason for keeping her was, after all, less the advantage he might gain by it than the pleasure he found in tormenting her and her family. To this instinct of the jungle beast was added the interest she had inspired in him. Untaught of life she was, no doubt, a child of the desert, in some ways primitive as Eve; but he perceived in her the capacity for deep feeling, for passion, for that kind of fierce, dauntless endurance it is given some women to possess.

      Miss Weaver took charge of the comfort of her guest. Her manner showed severe disapproval of this girl so lost to the feelings of her sex as to have attempted murder. That she was young and pretty made matters worse. Alice Weaver always had worshipped her brother, by the law of opposites perhaps. She was as drab and respectable as Boston. All her tastes ran to humdrum monotony. But turbulent, lawless Buck, the brother whom she had brought up after the death of their mother, held her heart in the hollow of his hard, careless hand.

      "Have you had everything you wish?" she would ask Phyllis in a frigid voice.

      "I want to be taken home."

      "You should have thought of that before you did the dreadful thing you did."

      "You are holding me here a prisoner, then?"

      "An involuntary guest, my brother puts it. Until the sheriff can make other arrangements."

      "You have no right to do it without notifying my father. He is at Noches with my brother."

      "Mr. Weaver will do as he thinks best about that." The spinster shut her lips tight and walked from the room.

      Supper was brought to Phyllis by the Mexican woman. In spite of her indignation she ate and slept well. Nor did her appetite appear impaired next morning, when she breakfasted in her bedroom. Noon found her promoted to the family dining room. Weaver carried his arm in a sling, but made no reference to the fact. He attempted conversation, but Phyllis withdrew into herself and had nothing more friendly than a plain "No" or "Yes" for him. His sister was presently called away to arrange some household difficulty. At once Phyllis attacked the big man lounging in his chair at his ease.

      "I want to go home. I've got to be at the schoolhouse to-morrow morning," she announced.

      "It won't hurt you any to miss a few days' schooling, my dear. You'll learn more here than you will there, anyhow," he assured her pleasantly. Buck was cracking two walnuts in the palm of his hand and let his lazy smile drift her way only casually.

      She stamped her foot. "I tell you I'm the teacher. It is necessary I should be there."

      "You a schoolmarm!" he repeated, in surprise. "How old are you?"

      Her dress was scarcely below her shoe tops. She still had the slimness of immature girlhood, the adorable shy daring of some uncaptured wood nymph.

      "Does that matter to you, sir?"

      "How old?" he reiterated.

      "Going-on-eighteen," she answered—not because she wanted to, but because somehow she must. There was something compelling about this man's will. She would have resisted it had she not wanted to gain her point about going home.

      "So you teach the kids their A B C's, do you? And you just out of them yourself! How many scholars have you?"

      "Fourteen."

      "And they all love teacher, of course. Would you take me for a scholar, Miss Going-On-Eighteen?"

      "No!" she flamed.

      "You'd find me right teachable. And I would promise to love you, too."

      Color came and went in her face beneath the brow. How dared he mock her so! It humiliated and embarrassed and angered her.

      "Are you going to let me go back to my school?" she demanded.

      "I reckon your school will have to get along without you for a few days. Your fourteen scholars will keep right on loving you, I expect. 'To memory dear, though far from eye.' Or, if you like, I'll send my boys up into the hills, and round up the whole fourteen here for you. Then school can keep right here in the house. How about that? Ain't that a good notion, Miss Going-On-Eighteen?"

      She could stand his ironic mockery no longer. She faced him, fearless as a tiger: "You villain!"

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