William MacLeod Raine

“ For the outdoors West takes off its hat reverently to women worthy of respect, especially when they are young and friendly.
Helen Messiter had come to Wyoming because the call of adventure, the desire for experience outside of rutted convention, were stirring her warm-blooded youth. She had seen enough of life lived in a parlor, and when there came knocking at her door a chance to know the big, untamed outdoors at first hand she had at once embraced it like a lover. She was eager for her new life, and she set out skillfully to make these men tell her what she wanted to know. ”

“ She was new to the West; but some instinct stronger than reason told the girl that here was no playful puncher shooting up the scenery to ventilate his exuberance. Her imagination conceived something more deadly; a sinister picture of men pumping lead in a grim, close-lipped silence; a lusty plainsman, with murder in his heart, crumpling into a lifeless heap, while the thin smoke-spiral curled from his hot rifle.
So the girl imagined the scene as she ran swiftly forward through the pines to the edge of the butte bluff whence she might look down upon the coulée that nestled against it. ”

“ As for Nora, it is not too much to say that she was having the time of her life. Detroit, Michigan, could offer no such field for her expansive charms as the Bighorn country, Wyoming. Here she might have her pick of a hundred, and every one of them picturesquely begirt with flannel shirt, knotted scarf at neck, an arsenal that bristled, and a sun-tan that could be achieved only in the outdoors of the Rockies. Certainly these knights of the saddle radiated a romance with which even her floorwalker “gentleman friend” could not compete. ”

“ It was as if a thousand years of civilization had been sponged out in an eyebeat. He stood before her a savage primeval, his tight-lipped smile cruel in its triumph.
“Did I begin this fight? Didn’t y’u and your punchers try to balk me by taking that sheep-herder from me after I had bagged him? That was your hour. By God, this is mine! I’ll teach y’u it isn’t safe to interfere with me. What I want I get one way or another, and don’t y’u forget it, my girl.” ”

“ Like an arrow the outlaw’s pony shot forward, a lariat circling round and round the rider’s head. At every leap the cow pony lessened the gap as it pounded forward on the heels of the flying steer.
The loop swept forward and dropped over the horns of the animal. The pony, with the perfect craft of long practice, swerved to one side with a rush. The dragging rope swung up against the running steer’s legs, grew suddenly taut. Down went the steer’s head, and next moment its feet were swept from under it as it went heavily to the ground. Man and horse were perfect in their team work. ”

“ So for an instant she waited before it was borne in on her that the voice was a human one, and that the heaven from which it descended was the hilltop above her.
A wild laugh, followed by an oath, cut the dying echoes of the song. She could hear the swish of a quirt falling again and again, and the sound of trampling hoofs thudding on the hard, sun-cracked ground. Startled, she sprang to her feet, and saw silhouetted against the skyline a horse and his rider fighting for mastery. ”

“ Back in her room at the hotel an hour later Helen paced up and down under a nervous strain foreign to her temperament. She was afraid; for the first time in her life definitely afraid. This man pitted against her had deliberately divorced his life from morality. In him lay no appeal to any conscience court of last resort. But the terror of this was not for herself principally, but for her flying lover. With his indubitable power, backed by the unpopularity of the sheepman in this cattle country, the King of the Bighorn could destroy his cousin if he set himself to do so. ”

“ Helen’s swift glance swept over Nora and the foreman. They were in a dark alcove, oblivious of anybody else. Also they were in each other’s arms frankly. For some reason wine flowed into the cream of Helen’s cheeks.
“Do you have to ‘get even’? Among friends is that necessary?” she asked shyly.
“I hope not. If it is, I’m sure bankrupt. Even my thanks seem to stay at home. If y’u hadn’t done so much for me, perhaps I could tell y’u how much y’u had done. But I have no words to say it.”
“Then don’t,” she advised.
“Y’u’re the best friend a man ever had. That’s all I can say.” ”

“ The dusky, long-lashed eyes which always give a woman an effect of beauty, the splendid fling of head, and the piquant, finely cut features, with their unconscious tale of Brahmin caste, the long lines of the supple body, willowy and yet plump as a partridge—they went to his head like strong wine. Here was an adventure from the gods—a stubborn will to bend, the pride of a haughty young beauty to trail in the dust, her untamed heart to break if need be. ”

“ After your lover is dead, I’ll come back and make love to y’u again,” he sneered.
“Never!” She stood before him like a queen in her lissom, brave, defiant youth. “And as for your cousin, you may kill him, but you can’t destroy his contempt for you. He will die despising you for a coward and a scoundrel.” ”

“ AT THE LAZY D RANCH
Helen Messiter was a young woman very much alive, which implies that she was given to emotions; and as her machine skimmed over the ground to the Lazy D she had them to spare. For from the first this young man had taken her eye, and it had come upon her with a distinct shock that he was the notorious scoundrel who was terrorizing the countryside. She told herself almost passionately that she would never have believed it if he had not said so himself. She knew quite well that the coldness that had clutched her heart when he gave his name had had nothing to do with fear. ”

“ The black tide raced under the swarthy tan of his face. He leaned forward till his beady eyes were close to her defiant ones. “Y’u have forgotten one thing, Miss Messiter. A rattlesnake can sting. I ask nothing of you. Can’t I break your heart without your loving me? You’re only a woman—and not the first I have broken, by God—”
His slim, lithe body was leaning forward so that it cut off others, and left them to all intents alone. At a touch of her fingers the handbag in her lap flew open and a little ivory-hilted revolver lay in her hand. ”

“ There are men whose looks are a profanation to any good woman. Ned Bannister, of the Shoshones, was one of them. He looked at his cousin, and his ribald eyes coasted back to bold scrutiny of this young woman’s charming, buoyant youth. There was Something in his face that sent a flush of shame coursing through her rich blood. No man had ever looked at her like that before.
“Take awful good care of him,” he sneered, with so plain an implication of evil that her clean blood boiled. “But I know y’u will, and don’t let him go before he’s real strong.” ”

“ What the foreman had said was exactly true. Helen Messiter did want them both, and she wanted them very much indeed.
After supper she had been dreamily playing over to herself one of Chopin’s waltzes, when she became aware, by some instinct, that she was not alone in the room. There had been no least sound, no slightest stir to betray an alien presence. Yet that some one was in the room she knew, and by some subtle sixth sense could even put a name to the intruder. ”

“ Rage flared in the other’s eye. “Too good for me, are y’u, my mealy-mouthed cousin? Y’u always thought yourself better than me. When y’u were a boy you used to go sneaking to that old hypocrite, your grandfather—”
“You have said enough,” interrupted the other sternly. “I’ll not hear another word. Keep your foul tongue off him.”
Their eyes silently measured strength.
“Y’u’ll not hear a word!” sneered the chief of the rustlers. “What will y’u do, dear cousin?
“Stand up and fight like a man and settle this thing once for all.” ”

“ It was a lonely desolate country, full of the wide deep silences of utter emptiness, yet there could be no footfall but the whisper of it was bruited on the wings of the wind.
“Do you know where the Lazy D ranch is from here?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Can you take me home?”
“I surely can. But not to-night. You’re more tired than y’u know. We’ll camp here, and in the mo’ning we’ll hit the trail bright and early.”
This did not suit her at all. “Is it far to the Lazy D?” she inquired anxiously.
“Every inch of forty miles. There’s a creek not more than two hundred yards from here. ”

“ But the insolence of him, the reckless defiance of all standards of society, shook her even while it enraged her. He had put forth his claim like a braggart, but he had made good with an audacity superb in its effrontery. How she hated him! How she feared him! The thoughts were woven inseparably in her mind. Mephisto himself could not have impressed himself more imperatively than this strutting, heartless master artist in vice.
She saw him again presently down in the arena, for it was his turn to show his skill at roping. Texas had done well; very well, indeed. ”

“ FOR THE WORLD’S CHAMPIONSHIP
The scene on which Helen Messiter’s eyes rested that mellow Fourth of July was vivid enough to have interested a far more jaded mind than hers. Nowhere outside of Cattleland could it have been duplicated. Wyoming is sparsely populated, but the riders of the plains think nothing of traveling a hundred miles in the saddle to be present at a “broncobusting” contest. ”

“ No faintest movement could escape the sheepman’s eyes, no least stir fail to apprise his ears. Yet for many minutes he waited in vain, and the delay told him that he had to do with a trained hunter rather than a mere reckless cow-puncher. For somewhere in the rough country before him his enemy lay motionless, every faculty alive to the least hint of his presence. ”

“ Strikingly handsome in a dark, sinister way, one would say at first sight, and later would chafe at the justice of a verdict not to be denied.
Ned Bannister rose from his seat beside Helen. “Wish me luck,” he said, with his gay smile.
“I wish you all the luck you deserve,” she answered.
“Oh, wish me more than that if y’u want me to win.”
“I didn’t say I wanted you to win. You take the most unaccountable things for granted.”
“I’ve a good mind to win, then, just to spite y’u,” he laughed. ”

“ He was a tall man and well-knit, dressed incongruously in up-to-date riding breeches and boots, in combination with the usual gray shirt, knotted kerchief and wide-brimmed felt hat of the horseman of the plains. The dust of the desert lay thick on him, without in the least obscuring a certain ribald elegance, a distinction of wickedness that rested upon him as his due. To this result his debonair manner contributed, though it carried with it no suggestion of weakness. ”

“ Her heart had been in her mouth every moment of the time this morning while he had been tossed hither and thither on the back of his mount. In his delirium he had said he loved her. If he did, why should he torture her so? It was well enough for sound men to risk their lives, but—
A cheer swelled in the grand stand and died breathlessly away. McWilliams was setting a pace it would take a rare expert to equal. He was a trick rider, and all the spectacular feats that appealed to the onlooker were his. ”

“ It was characteristic even of her impulsiveness that Helen Messiter curbed the swift condemnation that leaped to her lips when she knew that the man sitting beside her was the notorious bandit of the Shoshone fastnesses. She was not in the least afraid. A sure instinct told her he was not the kind of a man of whom a woman need have fear so long as her own anchor held fast. ”

“ From a clump of bushes a hundred yards away came the crack of a rifle. A bullet sang past, cutting a line that left on one side of it Bannister, on the other Miss Messiter and her foreman. Instantly the two men slid from their horses on the farther side, dragged down the young woman behind the cover of the broncos, and arranged the three ponies so as to give her the greatest protection available. Somehow the weapons that garnished them had leaped to their hands before their feet touched the ground.
“That coyote isn’t one of our men. I’ll back that opinion high,” said McWilliams promptly. ”