The Young Runaway, page 10
"Mrs. Fenner, this is my niece, Martha Ann Dixon," said Bligh proudly. "Martha, meet Jim's wife."
Greetings had scarcely been exchanged before Martha had taken a liking for this little western woman. Then Jim came in with Martha's bags.
"Set down, Martha, an' make yourself to home," invited Bligh, as he placed the rocker for her. "Mrs. Fenner, I reckon this room will have to be Martha's."
"Oh, I couldn't take your living room," protested the girl.
"Wal, you'll have to, 'cause it's our only one. It's got to be fixed up, too. What'll we need, Mrs. Fenner?"
"Washstand, mirror, bureau, some pegs to hang clothes on, some more rugs on the floor an' a curtain for the window," replied Mrs. Fenner practically.
"Reckon we can find all but the bureau. We'll get thet in town. We'll rustle things pronto...Martha, tell us how in the world you ever got here, alone, an' in them togs."
Whereupon Martha, inspired as well as excited by her glad-eyed, wondering audience, related the pleasantest part of her hitchhiking experience.
"An' nothin' else happened?" ejaculated her uncle.
"Not much. Tramps tried to rob me and a couple of young men got fresh. But altogether my trip was uneventful."
"Nick, it was them eyes," spoke up Jim Fenner solemnly.
"No—the good Lord!" added Mrs. Fenner.
"Wal, she's here, an' I say the day of miracles isn't past...Come, we'll rustle what we can find to make her comfortable."
"But, Uncle, the driver told me that to rustle means to steal," remonstrated Martha. "Please don't rustle all those things for me."
They laughed and departed in great excitement, plainly bewildered by her unexpected arrival, but undoubtedly happy over it. And that was what made Martha's heart sing. She began to unpack her luggage, but the unpacking, owing to frequent interruptions, took a long time. At last between the four of them they had the living room most satisfactorily furnished.
"Wal, thet's fine," declared Bligh, viewing the result of their labors. "I'll send Jim or Andrew into town tomorrow for what else we can think of...Mrs. Fenner, will you fix some lunch for us? Are you hungry, lass?"
"I'll say I am!" cried Martha.
"Wal, it does my eyes good to see you," replied her uncle, taking her hand. "You look so much like your mother that at first I thought she had come...Child, I don't know what to say to you."
"Don't scold, Uncle," she pleaded. "I just had to come."
"You ran off?"
"Yes. I lied to Mother. That hurts terribly. It seems so much worse now."
"Have you written her?"
"Once. I told her I was with a girl friend, whose uncle wanted to take us to the Black Hills."
"Your mother will have to know."
"Yes—but—but there's no hurry...Oh, what can I say to her?"
"Martha, is this a visit you are paying me?"
"A long one—perhaps forever," replied Martha Ann, as she looked away.
"What has hurt you, lass?"
"Oh, everything."
"An unhappy love affair?" he asked, with a grave smile.
"No. I'm sick of boys and men who keep pestering me...Then I grew to hate the city—the noise, dirt, rush—and being poor. I worked while I went to college—paid my own way—saved a little to come west...Uncle, I didn't realize till I got to the Black Hills what it was I really wanted and needed. It was change, freedom, loneliness. To be thrown on my own!"
"How old are you, Martha?"
"Nineteen last February."
"You look younger...Now, my dear, I'm curious to know how a slip of a college girl aims to help a poor old cattleman?"
"Uncle Nick, wait till you get acquainted with this modern college girl! I shall help you in a thousand ways...Tell me, Uncle, just how are you situated?"
"Wal, I've picked up considerable in health out here. It's higher country. As for worldly wealth, lass, I have mighty little. Got here with the last thousand head of cattle I saved back at Belle Fourche. I should tell you thet before I left there I corresponded with a cattleman whose range is on the Sweetwater. An' he induced me to come in on a deal with him—which I'm sorry to say Jim Fenner doesn't like."
"What kind of deal?" queried Martha Ann.
"I was to furnish stock an' he would run them with his, savin' me the expense of an outfit."
"On what basis?"
"Equal shares. But when I got out here he bucked. I expected an equal share of his stock, but he claims I was only to get a share of my own thet he'd raise an' market."
"How much stock has this man?"
"Wal, some less than mine."
"I think he drove a sharp bargain."
"So do I. Anyway, he now refuses to reconsider the deal. Says he has my agreement in black an' white. An' if I don't agree he'll take the deal to court."
"What's his name?"
"McCall. What's more, he claims thet he has a lien on this homestead. A homesteader named Boseman settled here, but never proved up on his claim. Abandoned the farm, which was homesteaded by other cowmen, who in turn never got a patent on it."
"Did you lay out any more for it?"
"Only on improvements."
"How much?"
"I don't know. Not much yet."
"Then if you have to get off you won't stand to lose much?"
"No. But I've taken a shine to the place. Spring water has some mineral quality. Good for me. I'd like to stay."
"Then you bet we'll stay," declared Martha Ann.
Uncle Nick clapped his hands. "Once in a long while I have a hunch...I just had one."
"What is it, Uncle?" asked Martha smilingly.
"You've changed my luck."
"Why, of course. What do you think I hitchhiked out here for?"
"I reckon the Lord sent you. Come to think of it, Martha, I believe he's rememberin' my years of toil an' defeat on the ranges. He has sent me help. This man Jim Fenner is an Arizonian. He threw in with me, not in hope of profit, but because he an' his wife liked me. They've had a hard time since Jim got crippled an' couldn't do a regular cowboy's work. Then a handy man came along—works for his board. Now you come with a modern college girl's ideas on cattle raisin'!"
"Uncle, I'm going to run outdoors where I can yell!"
Martha Ann did run. She ran so fast that she could scarcely see where she was going. Pell-mell she ran around a corner of the barn only to bump so violently into a man that she sat down with a thud. Her hat fell off and her hair cascaded down over her eyes. She put both hands flat on the ground in order to raise herself when the person with whom she had collided uttered a strange exclamation.
"Do you occupy all the land on this range?" inquired Martha flippantly.
She shook the hair out of her eyes to see a tall, wide-shouldered young man in blue jeans. His face was familiar. She saw a sudden cloud of red tinge his brown cheek. His gray gaze seemed to bore right through her.
he burst out.
"Who else did you think I am?"
"Wyoming Mad!" And he threw up his hands.
Then Martha Ann recognized him. He was changed somehow, thinner, sun blistered yet he was the one real hero of her hitchhike, the rescuer who had so rudely disapproved of her, and whom she could never forget—Andrew Bonning.
"You!" she exclaimed weakly, and she would have crawled into a hole had there been one near to hide her blush.
"Howdy, little kick hunter...Who else do you think I am?"
"Here—in Wyoming—on Uncle Nick's ranch?"
"Sure. Don't you see me?"
"You're the new hired man—the handy man—who works for his board?"
"The very same, Wyoming Mad," returned Bonning, with a bow.
Martha Ann leaped in front of him. "Then—you're fired!" she cried.
ANDREW BONNING leaned back against the corral gate a victim of emotions that were compounded of surprise, annoyance, amusement and reluctant admiration. So this independent young hitchhiker who had haunted him for the past few weeks had turned up again under even more complex and bewildering circumstances. He might have expected her to bob up any day.
"Yeah? So I'm fired?" he queried slowly.
"You bet you are," she snapped.
"Who's firing me?"
"I am."
Andrew studied the girl. She was certainly angry, as well as surprised. Her face was pale and her eyes were blazing. She had the strangest, most beautiful eyes he had ever seen in a woman, and though he remembered them, this nearer view under the bright sun seemed to render null his former impression. They flared upon him with a clear amber light. She had red lips, just now set determinedly.
"Who are you?" asked Andrew.
"I'm Martha Ann Dixon. Mr. Bligh is my uncle. And I've come west to help him run his ranch."
A laugh interrupted Andrew's gravity. "Miss Martha Ann Dixon," he said. "That accounts for the M A D...Well, we seem fated to meet each other. I'm sorry...Do you mean to run Bligh's ranch, or to run off the hired men who don't fall for you at the drop of a hat?"
"Mr. Bonning, all I mean is that I wouldn't have you on this ranch," she blazed.
"I see. Well, if I were to consider only myself, I wouldn't want to stay. But it just happens that Mr. Bligh needs me."
"No more than any other hand, I'm sure."
"Indeed he does—more than man you might find."
"Oh. You certainly have a poor opinion of yourself."
"If I had, it evidently could not be as poor as yours of me. May I inquire why my presence on this ranch is so obnoxious to you?"
"If you were on the level you wouldn't ask."
"That's the last thing I'm not, Miss Dixon," he returned, coldly. "And if you're not throwing a bluff with your pretty pride, your outraged dignity, you'll explain why you say I'm not on the level."
"You're not—because you—you insulted me."
"I did nothing of the sort," declared Andrew flatly.
"You did! I was terribly indebted to you when you rescued me from those tramps. But you spoiled it by—by taking me for a common—for something I'm not."
"Miss Dixon, that wild stunt of yours, hiking the roads alone, hunting for kicks, ready and willing to be picked up by anyone, laid you open to—"
"I wasn't hunting for kicks," she interrupted almost in tears. "I wasn't ready and willing to be picked up by anybody—"
"Now not being on the level," he returned, with obvious sarcasm in his voice. His anger was struggling with a deeper emotion.
on the level, but I don't care to prove it to you," she retorted, her face flaming red. "I simply don't care what you think. I did, but not any more...For all I know you might be a confidence man, a rustler—anything but a Missouri farm hand."
"I might be, but I'm not. It doesn't matter in the least to you, or to anyone out here, what or who I am. I'm honest, and I chose to offer my services free to your uncle because I needed a home and he needed an honest hired man. That's all. And you're sore at me because I saw through you."
"You didn't see through me."
"Wyoming Mad, you'll understand me better if I say that you're not very convincing."
She grew white even to her bright red lips.
"Andrew Bonning, you thought me a wild, wayward girl, didn't you?" she queried furiously.
"What else I think?" he retorted.
"You called me 'an unforgettable kid,' didn't you?"
"I'm afraid you are."
am I?"
"You are rather pretty and distinctly original," he answered in a way that made what he said sound almost uncomplimentary.
"But sailing under false colors?"
"I certainly wouldn't call you true blue. You strike me as the chameleon type, Miss Dixon. You change your color—or your line—to suit the individual you want to impress."
"You think I flirted with that boy who took me to dinner?"
"I saw you. And you impressed me as a fast little worker—especially with hicks like him."
"You think—I'm even—worse?" she faltered, in a suffocated little voice.
"I'm ashamed to confess that I did. I let my imagination run riot—and pictured you with him in the park, or in his car."
"Oh, you're like all the rest of the beastly men," she cried, with renewed fury. "You've a one-track mind when it comes to women. What kind of sister could you have, or girl friends?...Isn't there any man who can understand a girl's longings to be free—to have adventures—to find herself—to be let alone? Oh, what a rotten world! I thought I'd escape from all that—way out here in Wyoming."
"So did I, Miss Dixon," he returned, stung to a bitterness that overcame his surprise.
"Well, you can go to blazes!" she concluded, with finality, as she turned away.
"Thank you. After firing me you consign me to blazes. You certainly have a nice, gentle, sweet disposition," he replied, following her around the barn. "Here's your uncle now. I'll tell him."
It was evident that Miss Dixon wanted to escape this encounter.
"Hello, here you are," called out Bligh, intercepting them. "Have you scraped an acquaintance?...Martha, this is Andrew—"
"Uncle, we've met before, to my sorrow," interposed the girl icily.
"Eh? What? Wall now?"
"Mr. Bligh, we have met, back in Nebraska somewhere," said Andrew hurriedly. "I did her some trifling service. But I offended her because I disapproved of a young girl hiking alone along the highway—picking up men to ride with. I'm sorry. But I think it's a pretty reckless stunt even for these modern days. I had no right to criticize her. And for that I apologize. The harm is done, however...and in fact she won't have me on the ranch."
"Uncle, I fired him," cried Martha. "I hope you agree with me!"
"Fired him!...Why, lass, what're you talkin' about? Of course I wouldn't keep any man—but be reasonable. I agree with Andrew that your hike out here was a pretty wild thing to do. The Lord must have watched over you, Martha...An' as for Andrew's leavin'—I'd hate to see him go. Cowboys are hard customers for me to handle, Martha. They drink an' leave the ranch. Now Andrew is steady. He's different, lass. He'll fit in here. Jim Fenner particularly likes him. Can't we fix up your quarrel somehow?"
"No, Uncle. But if Mr. Bonning is so valuable to you I withdraw my objection," replied the girl, and walked away with her head proudly erect.
"Wal, Andrew, this day is one of surprises," said the rancher. "Strange you two should meet on the road an' then meet again out here. She seems a mighty fiery little lass...Which of you is to blame for this?"
"I am," replied Andrew, emphatically. "I reproved her pretty harshly for this hiking stunt. It was none of my business."
"Reckon you've been pretty hard on the lass. She's only a spirited filly. Like her mother and grandmother before her...Fine old family—the Campbells. Poor now, an' perhaps thet's one reason why Martha ran off. I ran off thirty years ago...How about you?"
"Well, I ran off from something, that's sure. Probably my own morbid self."
"It will all come right. But not soon. The Campbells don't forgive easily...Thet was funny about her firm' you. Wal, she withdrew her objection. I hope thet'll be the end of it."
Andrew had his doubts about that. As he walked away toward his quarters he found that his unreasonable temper had cooled, and that he was now in a state close to self-reproach. He had answered the girl's pertinent queries coolly and to her discredit. Any young woman with a grain of spirit would have resented what he had said and would have defended herself. She had done more. Then remembering what she had declaimed so passionately, he felt deeply ashamed, and suddenly he was horrified by the thought that it was quite possible that he had completely misjudged her. How scathingly she had denounced all men! It made him feel decidedly uncomfortable. She was perfectly right. But what else could she expect from men? It seemed to Andrew that she had almost invited approach. Of all the escapades that had ever come under his notice, of all the crazy stunts that he could conceive, this hiking alone by a stunningly pretty girl through the West was the most audacious and questionable. She seemed clever, intelligent, refined. Bligh vouched for her good blood.
All the more reason to suspect her! This twentieth-century restlessness and thoughtlessness, this boldness so typical of the age, this urge for thrills she could not satisfy at home, this wanderlust of the past combined with this modern obsession to meet and captivate strange men—these all must be at the bottom of Martha Ann Dixon's flight from a good home. It was a pity. Old Bligh would never be able to see through this clever little minx.
"But she can't fool me," he reassured himself. "Not a chance! She knows her stuff. She has my sister and Connie tied to the mast. For they played the game openly and aboveboard."
Having delivered this ultimatum to his smarting conscience, Andrew stamped into the old cabin where he had elected to make his abode. It was getting to mean a great deal to him—this ancient abandoned cabin. The initials cut on the logs and the charcoal drawings of brands on the stone fireplace, the accumulation of years of range dust on the rafters, the friendly mice and squirrels that had at first regarded his presence as an intrusion, the bleached antlers over the mantel, the old couch of boughs in one corner, the black smoke stains on the chimney, the holes in the roof that he had not yet mended—these things and everything about the big room held for him the atmosphere of bygone frontier days.
Andrew worked at odd times on making the cabin more habitable. Before the snow came he would have it snug and dry and comfortable. Just now there was nothing but his blankets and his bags and saddle. He pictured himself during the winter, on dark nights when the blizzard was howling, sitting beside an open fire, watching the red embers, and reveling in his solitude.
His favorite place during this summer weather was out on the porch that faced the river and the magnificent reach of purple and gold stretching to the Rockies.
This porch spoke as eloquently as the big room of what had happened there. It certainly needed a good many repairs. Andrew decided, however, that the bullet holes in the posts and cabin wall, made during a rustler-cowboy war in early days, should not be removed for any repairs. The slope of the land toward the river caused the floor of the porch to stand high off the ground. The wide steps leading down had rotted away until they were now unsafe.
