Skyrider (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower

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СКАЧАТЬ behind the cantle. She looked then like a slim boy—or she would have, except for the hat. Mary V cherished her complexion, which Arizona sun and winds would have burned a brick red. In cool weather she wore a Stetson like the boys; but now she favored a great, straw sombrero such as you see section hands wear along the railroad track in Arizona. To keep it on her head in the winds she had resorted to tying a ribbon down over the brim from the front of the crown to the nape of her neck; and tying another ribbon from the back of the crown down under her chin. Thus doubly anchored, and skewered with two hatpins besides, the hat might be counted upon to give Mary V no trouble, but a great deal of protection. Worn with the checked riding breeches and the heavy, black puttees, it was not particularly becoming, but Mary V did not expect to meet many pairs of critical eyes. Rolling R boys were too much like home folks to bother about, having been accustomed to seeing Mary V in strange and various guises since she was a tiny tot.

      Southward she rode, and as swiftly as was wise if she valued the well-being of her horse. Movies will have it that nothing short of a gallop is tolerated by riders in the West; whereas Mary V had been taught from her childhood up that she must never “run” her horse unless there was need of it. She therefore contented herself with ambling along the trail at a distance-devouring trail-trot, slowing her horse to a walk on the rising slopes and urging him a little with her spurred heels on the levels. She did not let him lag—she could not, if she covered the distance she had in her mind to cover.

      Away over to the south—almost to Sinkhole Camp, in fact—was a ridge that was climbable on horseback. Not every ridge in that country was, and Mary V was not fond of walking in the sand on a hot day. The ridge commanded a far view, and was said to be a metropolis among the snakes that populated the region. Mary V had, very casually, mentioned to the boys that some day she meant to get a good picture of a snake den. She said “the girls” did not believe that snakes went in bunches and writhed amicably together in their dens. She was going to prove it to them.

      A perfectly logical quest it was therefore that led her toward that ridge. You could not blame Mary V if the view from the top of it extended to Sinkhole Camp and beyond. She had not made the view, remember, nor had she advised the snakes to choose that ridge for their dens. She was not even perfectly sure that they did choose it. The boys had told her that Black Ridge was “full up” with snake dens, and she meant to see if they told the truth.

      Wherefore her horse Tango laboriously carried Mary V up the ridge and kept his ears perked for the warning buzz of rattlers, and his eyes open for a feasible line retreat in case he heard one. Tango knew just as well as Mary V when they were in snake country. He had gone so far as to argue the point of climbing that ridge, but as usual Mary V’s argument was stronger than Tango’s, and he had yielded with an injured air that was quite lost upon his rider. Mary V was thinking of something else.

      They reached the top without having seen a single snake. Tango seemed somewhat surprised at this, but Mary V was not. Mary V thought it was too hot even for rattlesnakes, and as for the dearth of lizards—well she supposed the snakes had eaten them all. She had let Tango stop often to breathe, and whenever he did so she had looked south, scanning as much of the lower level as she could see, which was not the proper way to go about hunting snake dens, I assure you. But at the top she permitted Tango to walk into the shade of a boulder that radiated heat like a stove but was still preferable to the blistering sunlight, and there she left him while she walked a little nearer the edge of the rimrock that topped the ridge on its southern side.

      Once more she scanned the sweltering expanse of sagebrush, scant grass, many rock patches and much sand. She saw a rider moving along a shallow watercourse, and immediately she focused her glasses upon him. She gave an ejaculation of surprise when the powerful lenses annihilated nine tenths of the distance between them. One would judge from her manner and her tone that, while she had not been surprised to see a rider, that rider’s identity was wholly unexpected.

      She watched him until, having reached a certain place where a group of cottonwoods shaded the gully, he stopped and dismounted to fuss with his cinches. Mary V could not be sure whether he was merely killing time, or whether he really needed to tighten the saddle; but when another rider appeared suddenly from the eastward, she did know that the first rider showed no symptoms of surprise.

      She did not know the second arrival at the cottonwoods. She could see that he was Mexican, and that was all. The two talked together with much gesturing on the part of the Mexican, and sundry affirmative nods on the part of the first rider. The Mexican frequently waved a hand toward the south—toward Sinkhole Camp, perhaps. They seemed to be in a hurry, Mary V thought. They did not tarry more than five minutes before they parted, the Mexican riding back toward the east, the first rider returning westward. He had come cautiously, at an easy pace. He went back riding at a long lope, as though time was precious to him.

      Mary V watched until she saw him emerge out of that hollow and duck into another which led toward the northwest and, if he followed it, would bring him out near the head of Dry Gulch, which was several miles nearer the Rolling R home ranch than was the ridge where she stood. When he had gone, she turned again to see where the Mexican was going. The Mexican, she discovered, was going east as fast as his horse could carry him without dropping dead in that heat; and he, also, was keeping to the hollows.

      “Here’s a pretty howdy-do!” said Mary V to the palpitating atmosphere. “I’m just going to tell dad about Tex sneaking away down here to meet Mexicans and things on the sly! I never did like that Tex. I don’t like his eyes. You can’t see into them at all. I’ll bet they’re framing up something on Johnny Jewel—they were pointing right toward his camp. There’s no telling what they’re up to! I’m going right and tell dad—”

      But she couldn’t. Mary V knew she couldn’t. In the first place, her dad would ask her what she was doing on Black Ridge, which was far beyond her permitted range of activities. Her dad would foolishly maintain that she could glimpse all the desert necessary without going that far from the ranch. In the second place, he would probably tell her that he was paying Tex to ride the range and, if he met a Mexican, it was his business to send that same Mexican back where he came from. In the third place, he would think she was riding over there for a reason which was untrue and very, very unjust. And he wouldn’t fire Tex, because Tex was a good “hand” and hands were hard to find. He would simply make her promise to stay at home.

      “He’d say it was perfectly all right for Tex—and perfectly all wrong for me. Dad’s tremendously pin-headed where I am concerned. So I suppose I’ll just have to say nothing, and ride all that long way in the hot sun to make sure that horrid Johnny Jewel is not being murdered or something. It doesn’t, of course, concern me personally at all—but dad is so short-handed this summer. And he actually threatened that he couldn’t afford me a new car this winter if wages go up or horses go down, or anything happens that doesn’t just please him. And I suppose Johnny Jewel has his uses, in the general scheme of dad’s business, so even if he is a mean, conceited little shrimp personally, I’ll have to go and make sure he isn’t killed, because it would be just like dad to call that bad luck, and grouch around and not get me the car.”

      Mary V had barely reached this goal of personal unconcern for anything but her own private interests, when Tango began to manifest certain violent symptoms of having seen or heard something very disagreeable. Mary V had to take some long, boyish steps in order to snatch his reins before he bolted and left her afoot, which would have been a real calamity. But she caught him, scolded him shrewishly and slapped his cheek until he backed from her wall-eyed, and then she mounted him and went clattering down off the ridge without having seen any snake dens at all. Doubtless the boys had lied to her, as usual.

      To Sinkhole Camp was a long way, much longer than it had looked from the top of Black Ridge. Mary V, her face red with heat, hurried on and on, wishing over and over that she had never started at all, but lacking the resolution to turn back. Yet she was considered a very resolute young woman by those who knew her most intimately.

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