The "Wild West" Collection. William MacLeod Raine
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him. There can't be two as--as fascinating as Seor Norris," she mocked.
His smoldering eyes had the possessive insolence she resented and yet found so stimulating.
"Did I say there were two?" he drawled.
It was his parting shot. With a touch of the spur he was off, leaving her no time for an adequate answer.
There were no elusions and inferences about Philip Norris when he wanted to be direct. He had fairly taken her breath away. Melissy's instinct told her there was something humiliating about such a wooing. But picturesque and unconventional conduct excuse themselves in a picturesque personality. And this man had that if nothing else.
She told herself she was angry at him, that he took liberties far beyond those of any of the other young men. Yet, somehow, she went into the house smiling. A color born of excitement burned beneath her sparkling eyes. She had entered into her heritage of womanhood and the call of sex was summoning her to the adventure that is old as the garden where Eve met Adam.
CHAPTER V
THE TENDERFOOT TAKES UP A CLAIM
Mr. Diller, alias Morse, alias Bellamy, did not long remain at the Bar Double G as a rider. It developed that he had money, and, tenderfoot though he was, the man showed a shrewd judgment in his investments. He bought sheep and put them on the government forest reserve, much to the annoyance of the cattlemen of the district.
Morse, as he now called himself, was not the first man who had brought sheep into the border country. Far up in the hills were several camps of them. But hitherto these had been there on sufferance, and it had been understood that they were to be kept far from the cattle range. The extension of the government reserves changed the equation. A good slice of the range was cut off and thrown open to sheep. When Morse leased this and put five thousand bleaters upon the feeding ground the sentiment against him grew very bitter.
Lee had been spokesman of a committee appointed to remonstrate with him. Morse had met them pleasantly but firmly. This part of the reserve had been set aside for sheep. If it were not leased by him it would be by somebody else. Therefore, he declined to withdraw his flocks. Champ lost his temper and swore that he for one would never submit to yield the range. Sharp bitter words were passed. Next week masked men drove a small flock belonging to Morse over a precipice.
The tenderfoot retaliated by jumping a mining claim staked out by Lee upon which the assessment work had not been kept up. The cattleman contested this in the courts, lost the decision, and promptly appealed. Meanwhile, he countered by leasing from the forest supervisor part of the run previously held by his opponent and putting sheep of his own upon it.
"I reckon I'll play Mr. Morse's own game and see how he likes it," the angry cattleman told his friends.
But the luck was all with Morse. Before he had been working his new claim a month the Monte Cristo (he had changed the name from its original one of Melissy) proved a bonanza. His men ran into a rich streak of dirt that started a stampede for the vicinity.
Champ indulged in choice profanity. From his point of view he had been robbed, and he announced the fact freely to such acquaintances as dropped into the Bar Double G store.
"Dad gum it, I was aimin' to do that assessment work and couldn't jest lay my hands on the time. I'd been a millionaire three years and didn't know it. Then this damned Morse butts in and euchres me out of the claim. Some day him and me'll have a settlement. If the law don't right me, I reckon I'm most man enough to 'tend to Mr. Morse."
It was his daughter who had hitherto succeeded in keeping the peace. When the news of the relocation had reached Lee he had at once started to settle the matter with a Winchester, but Melissy, getting news of his intention, had caught up a horse and ridden bareback after him in time to avert by her entreaties a tragedy. For six months after this the men had not chanced to meet.
Why the tenderfoot had first come West--to hide what wounds in the great baked desert--no man knew or asked. Melissy had guessed, but she did not breathe to a soul her knowledge. It was a first article of Arizona's creed that a man's past belonged to him alone, was a blotted book if he chose to have it so. No doubt many had private reasons for their untrumpeted migration to that kindly Southwest which buries identity, but no wise citizen busied himself with questions about antecedents. The present served to sift one, and by the way a man met it his neighbors judged him.
And T. L. Morse met it competently. In every emergency with which he had to cope the man "stood the acid." Arizona approved him a man, without according him any popularity. He was too dogmatic to win liking, but he had a genius for success. Everything he touched turned to gold.
The Bar Double G lies half way between Mammoth and Mesa. Its position makes it a central point for ranchers within a radius of fifteen miles. Out of the logical need for it was born the store which Beauchamp Lee ran to supply his neighbors with canned goods, coffee, tobacco, and other indispensables; also the eating house for stage passengers passing to and from the towns. Young as she was, Melissy was the competent manager of both of these.
It was one afternoon during the hour the stage stopped to let the passengers dine that Melissy's wandering eye fell upon Morse seated at one of the tables. Anger mounted within her at the cool impudence of the man. She had half a mind to order him out, but saw he was nearly through dinner and did not want to make a scene. Unfortunately Beauchamp Lee happened to come into the store just as his enemy strolled out from the dining-room.
The ranchman stiffened. "What you been doing in there, seh?" he demanded sharply.
"I've been eating a very good dinner in a public caf. Any objections?"
"Plenty of 'em, seh. I don't aim to keep open house for Mr. Morse."
"I understand this is a business proposition. I expect to pay seventy-five cents for my meal."
The eyes of the older man gleamed wrathfully. "As for yo' six bits, if you offer it to me I'll take it as an insult. At the Bar Double G we're not doing friendly business with claim jumpers. Don't you evah set yo' legs under my table again, seh."
Morse shrugged, turned away to the public desk, and addressed an envelope, the while Lee glared at him from under his heavy beetling brows. Melissy saw that her father was still of half a mind to throw out the intruder and she called him to her.
"Dad, Jos wants you to look at the hoof of one of his wheelers. He asked if you would come as soon as you could."
Beauchamp still frowned at Morse, rasping his unshaven chin with his hand. "Ce'tainly, honey. Glad to look at it."
"Dad! Please."
The ranchman went out, grumbling. Five minutes later Morse took his seat on the stage beside the driver, having first left seventy-five cents on the counter.
The stage had scarce gone when the girl looked up from her bookkeeping to see the man with the Chihuahua hat.
"_Buenos tardes, seorita_," he gave her with a flash of white teeth.
"_Buenos_," she nodded coolly.
But the dancing eyes of her could not deny their pleasure at sight of him. They had rested upon men as handsome, but upon none who stirred her blood so much.
He was in the leather chaps of a cowpuncher, gray-shirted, and a polka dot kerchief circled the brown throat. Life rippled gloriously from every motion of him. Hermes himself might have envied the perfect grace of the man.
She supplied his wants while they chatted.
"Jogged off your range quite a bit, haven't you?" she suggested.
"Some. I'll take two bits' worth of that smokin', _nina_."
She shook her head. "I'm no little girl. Don't you know I'm now half past eighteen?"
"My--my. That ad didn't do a mite of good, did it?"
"Not a bit."
"And you growing older every day."
"Does my age show?" she wanted to know anxiously.
The