The Max Brand Megapack. Max Brand
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she changed at once, and smiled up to him.
“I can’t stay mad at you, Steve. I s’pose it’s because of your nerve. I want you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“Is that a way to take it! I’ve asked you a favour, Steve.”
He said suspiciously: “It’s got something to do with the tenderfoot in the room out there?”
It was a palpable hit, for she coloured sharply. Then she took the bull by the horns.
“What if it is?”
“Sally, d’you mean to say you’ve fallen for that cheap line of lingo he passes out?”
“Steve, don’t try to kid me.”
“Why, you know who he is, don’t you?”
“Sure; Anthony Bard.”
“And do you know who Anthony Bard is?”
“Well?” she asked with some anxiety.
“Well, if you don’t know you can find out. That’s what the last girl done.”
She wavered, and then blinked her eyes as if she were resolved to shut out the truth.
“I asked you to do me a favour, Steve.”
“And I will. You know that.”
“I want you to see that Bard gets safe out of this town.”
“Sure. Nothing I’d rather do.”
She tilted her head a little to one side and regarded him wistfully.
“Are you double-crossin’ me, Steve?”
“Why d’you suspect me? Haven’t I said I’d do it?”
“But you said it too easy.”
The gentleness died in her face. She said sternly: “If you do double-cross me, you’ll find I’m about as hard as any man on the range. Get me?”
“Shake.”
Their hands met. After all, he did not guarantee what would happen to the tenderfoot after they were clear of the town. But perhaps this was a distinction a little too fine for the downright mind of the girl. A sea of troubles besieged the mind of Nash.
And to let that sea subside he wandered back to the eating room and found the tenderfoot finishing his coffee. The latter kept an eye of frank suspicion upon him. So the silence held for a brooding moment, until Bard asked: “D’you know the way to the ranch of William Drew?”
It was a puzzler to Nash. Was not that his job, to go out and bring the man to Drew’s place? Here he was already on the way. He remembered just in time that the manner of bringing was decidedly qualified.
He said aloud: “The way? Sure; I work on Drew’s place.”
“Really!”
“Yep; foreman.”
“You don’t happen to be going back that way to-night?”
“Not all the way; part of it.”
“Mind if I went along?”
“Nobody to keep you from it,” said the cowpuncher without enthusiasm.
“By the way, what sort of a man is Drew?”
“Don’t you know him?”
“No. The reason I want to see him is because I want to get the right to do some—er—fishing and hunting on a place of his on the other side of the range.”
“The place with the old house on it; the place Logan is?”
“Exactly. Also I wish to see Logan again. I’ve got several little things I’d like to have him explain.”
“H-m!” grunted Nash without apparent interest.
“And Drew?”
“He’s a big feller; big and grey.”
“Ah-h-h,” said the other, and drew in his breath, as though he were drinking.
It seemed to Nash that he had never seen such an unpleasant smile.
“You’ll get what you want out of Drew. He’s generous.”
“I hope so,” nodded the other, with far-off eyes. “I’ve got a lot to ask of him.”
CHAPTER XVII
BUTCH RETURNS
He reminded Nash of some big puma cub warming itself at a hearth like a common tabby cat, a tame puma thrusting out its claws and turning its yellow eyes up to its owner—tame, but with infinite possibilities of danger. For the information which Nash had given seemed to remove all his distrust of the moment before and he became instantly genial, pleasant. In fact, he voiced this sentiment with a disarming frankness immediately.
“Perhaps I’ve seemed to be carrying a chip on my shoulder, Mr. Nash. You see, I’m not long in the West, and the people I’ve met seem to be ready to fight first and ask questions afterward. So I’ve caught the habit, I suppose.”
“Which a habit like that ain’t uncommon. The graveyards are full of fellers that had that habit and they’re going to be fuller still of the same kind.”
Here Sally entered, carrying the meal of the cowpuncher, arranged it, and then sat on the edge of Bard’s table, turning from one to the other as a bird on a spray of leaves turns from sunlight to shadow and cannot make a choice.
“Bard,” stated Nash, “is going out to the ranch with me to-night.”
“Long ride for to-night, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but we’ll bunk on the way and finish up early in the morning.”
“Then you’ll have a chance to teach him Western manners on the way, Steve.”
“Manners?” queried the Easterner, smiling up to the girl.
She turned, caught him beneath the chin with one hand, tilting his face, and raised the lessoning forefinger of the other while she stared down at him with a half frown and a half smile like a schoolteacher about to discipline a recalcitrant boy.
“Western manners,” she said, “mean first not to doubt a man till he tries to double-cross you, and not to trust him till he saves your life; to keep your gun inside the leather till you’re backed up against the wall, and then to start shootin’ as soon as the muzzle is past the holster. Then the thing to remember is that the fast shootin’ is fine, but sure shootin’ is a lot better. D’you get me?”
“That’s a fine sermon,” smiled Bard, “but you’re too young to make a convincing preacher, Miss Fortune.”
“Misfortune,” said the girl quickly, “don’t have to be old to do a lot of teachin’.”
She sat back and regarded him with something of a frown and with folded arms.
He said with a sudden earnestness: “You seem to take it for granted that I’m due for a lot of trouble.”
But she shook her head gloomily.
“I know what you’re due for; I can see it in your eyes; I can hear it in your way of talkin’. If you was to ride the range with a sheriff on one side of you and a marshal on the other you couldn’t help fallin’ into trouble.”
“As a fortune-teller,” remarked Nash, “you’d make a good undertaker, Sally.”
“Shut up, Steve. I’ve seen this bird in action and I know what I’m talking about. When you coming back this way, Bard?”
He said thoughtfully: “Perhaps to-morrow night—perhaps—”
“It ought to be to-morrow night,”