The "Wild West" Collection. William MacLeod Raine
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he tried to 'fix' the books, and got caught.
"I'll pass over everything that followed, except to say that the disgrace did not become public. But it broke father's heart and hastened his death. When that occurred it was found that practically all the estate had come to me, and this fellow Smithy Caldwell threatened to disclose the forgery if I did not buy him off.
"That scared me, because I was now the head of the family, and I handed over two thousand dollars. Then I came West, and thought the whole matter was buried, until Caldwell turned up at the Bar T that night for supper.
"That's about all. You see, it's an ugly story, and it paints Lester pretty black. But I've thought the thing over a great many times, and can't blame him very much, after all, for it really was the result of my father's stern and narrow policy. The boy was in his most impressionable years, and was left to face the music alone. It seemed to age him mightily."
"But what will happen now?" asked Julie anxiously. "Aren't the other two still alive? Can't they make trouble?"
"Yes, but I don't think they will. I have the drop on Smithy now, and he will either write a full dismissal of the matter for all three of them or he will swing with the rustlers. And if I know my Smithy Caldwell, he won't be able to get pen and paper fast enough."
"But can you save him, even at that cost, do you think? The cowmen won't understand all this."
"That will rest with your father, dear," replied Bud, getting to his feet. "Now, let's go over and see him, for I have something else I want to ask him."
His face that had been clouded during his recital was suddenly flooded with the sunlight of his smile, and Julie realized for the first time what it had cost him to lay bare again these painful memories of a past he had sought to bury.
When he had helped her to her feet she went to him and laid her hands on his shoulders, looking up into his face with eyes that brimmed with the loosed flood of her love, so long pent up.
"Can I ever be worth what I have cost you today?" she asked humbly.
Tenderly he gathered her to him.
"In love there is no such word as cost," he said.
CHAPTER XXV
THE THREADS MEET
It could not have been later than ten o'clock in the morning when a puncher with sharp eyes might have seen two figures approaching the Bar T ranch house on horseback. They rode needlessly close together and swung their clasped and gauntleted hands like happy children.
One was a girl into whose radiant eyes a new wonder had come, and the other a handsome, tanned young man bathed in a deliriously happy expression.
"Isn't it jolly to be married without anyone's knowing?" cried Julie. "Oh, but won't they be surprised at home?"
"Rather!" remarked Bud, with a sobered expression. "I only hope your father doesn't widow you just as I ride into the yard with the olive branch."
"Stop it, Bud! What puts such awful thoughts into your head?"
"Experience. Your father was so mad about my getting the sheep across the river that he started his punchers walking home that same night, and nobody has seen him since."
Larkin spoke the truth, but little exaggerated. Beef Bissell, humiliated, beaten, and forced to accept the small end of a deal for once in his life, had started from the useless cowmen's camp by the Gray Bull the very night of the crossing. He ordered the men to follow and round up their stampeded horses and then to ride home.
Meanwhile he appropriated one horse that had not been in the corral and trotted homeward, eaten by chagrin and beside himself with impotent fury.
Bud and Julie had found this out the day of their talk concerning Lester, when they forded the stream on horses and asked for Bissell. Under the circumstances Bud developed a genius for inspiration that was little short of marvelous.
"What's the use of riding all the way home and having a grand row with your father?" he asked. "Why not go over to Rattlesnake, where there's a sky-pilot, and be married? Then we'll go home, and there can't be any row, because there will only be one party in the mood for it."
But the girl demurred. It was cruel to her father and mother, she said, not to have them present on the greatest day of her life. She allowed it was mighty ungrateful after all they had done for her. Then Bud took her hand in his and told her his principal reasons.
"I'm a business man, honey, and I've got to start north after Simmy and the sheep in three or four days," he said. "Shearing is late now, but I guess we can make it. This trouble has set me behind close to fifteen thousand dollars, and everything is in a critical state.
"I know it don't sound much like a lover, but as soon as we get on our feet we'll take a honeymoon to Japan that will make you think I'd never heard of a sheep.
"You want your mother and father in on the joy, I know, but it doesn't seem to me there can be much joy with nine or ten men sitting around waiting for their necks to be stretched. Does it to you?"
"No," said Julie, and shuddered.
"Then come along over to Rattlesnake and be married. Then we'll ride back to the Bar T, so you can see your folks, and I can see Caldwell. We can be through and away before anything is really done about the rustlers."
So it was arranged, and the two were married by an Episcopal clergyman who had a surplice but no cassock, and whose trouser-legs looked very funny moving about inside the thin, white material--and Julie nearly laughed out loud.
After the ceremony they had ridden out of town with their equipment and made their first honeymoon camp in a cool, green place beside a little brook that had trout in it and sang to them for hours on end.
Now, the day afterward, they were on the way home, and not without a few secret misgivings.
As they neared the Bar T a single man rode out to meet them. It was Lester, who had come the night before and was waiting for Bud, so as to be present at the interview with Smithy Caldwell, whom he had not yet seen.
He congratulated the pair warmly and rode with them to the corral.
Suddenly there was a shriek, and Martha Bissell tore out of the cook-house. She ran to Julie, kissed her, and welcomed her back; then when she heard the news she picked up her apron to start crying, and dropped it again, undecided what to do.
What with Bissell's safe arrival and Julie's glorious home-coming the poor woman was nearly out of her mind.
The excitement brought Beef Bissell around the house from the front veranda, where he had been grumbling and swearing all the morning. At sight of Larkin he halted in his tracks and began to redden. But he got no farther, for Julie flung herself into his arms, tears of happiness streaming down her face, and overwhelmed him with caresses.
Bissell was mightily relieved to see her. In fact, it had been all his wife could do to restrain him from starting out to unearth Julie when he arrived home and found her gone. But Martha said that the girl had gone to find Larkin, and added that the two were old enough to settle their troubles between them. So Bissell, remembering his last miserable interview with his daughter, decided not to interfere.
"Father, I'm married; please be happy and good to me," the girl said, clinging to him, and the fury that had flown to his head like wine died a natural death. After all, to see her happy was what he most wanted.
"Are you sure he will love you always?" he asked gently.
"Yes, father, I am. I refused to marry him long ago in Chicago." He kissed her for the first time in a long while, and then gently disengaged himself and took a step toward Bud.
"Larkin," he said, "yuh were always lucky, but yuh've beat all records for Wyoming now. I allow yuh can take her away with yuh on one condition."
"What's that?"
"That yuh never beat her like yuh beat me."
"Agreed!" laughed Bud, and grasped the other's hand. "But