She had put on a spotless red-checkered gingham dress that fitted perfectly, and revealed slim, rounded, womanly outlines which are the heritage of strength and perfect health. Her black hair was coiled loosely on top of her head, and a large red rose looked as if Nature had designed it to splash its vivid colour against that ebony background. With long, sure strides this girl of the mountains moved silently about from the great glossy range to the work table, washing crisp lettuce, deftly beheading snappy radishes, her slim fingers now white with dough and flour, or stirring with a large spoon in some steaming utensil over the fire. An extra fine dinner was in progress of preparation in honour of the Seldens' guest; yet the girl worked serenely and swiftly, with not a false move, not a flutter of excitement, never gathering so much as a spot on her crisp, stiff dress, always sure of herself, master of her diversified tasks. Was this the girl that an hour before he had seen so gracefully astride in a fifty-pound California saddle, her slim legs covered by scarred, fringed chaps, her black hair streaming to the bottom of her saddle skirts in two long, thick braids? There was a desperate tugging at the heart-strings of Oliver Drew. He knew now that if he failed to win this girl it were better for him had he not been born. And again and again she had sought him out for some obscure reason in no way connected with a desire for his companionship. He thought again of the episode on the hill after the rattlesnake bite, and he grew sick at heart at remembrance of the feel of those soft, firm lips.
When they arose from the bounteous meal Selden said to his guest:
"It's still light outdoors. Wanta look over the ranch a bit?"
They two strolled out to the stables and talked horses and saddles. They looked perfunctorily over the green young fruit in the orchard, and Selden showed Oliver the new pipe line which now carried spring water into all three of the living houses. They killed time till late twilight, and as one by one the stars came out the old man led the way to a prostrate pine at the edge of a fern patch. On it they seated themselves.
"They was little matter I wanted to talk to you about," said Selden half apologetically. "Le's have a smoke and see if we can't come to an understandin'. Just so! Just so!"
CHAPTER XVII
THE GIRL IN RED
Jessamy Selden finished washing and drying the supper dishes. Then she hurried to her room and slipped into a red-silk dress, by no means out of date, silk stockings, and high-heeled pumps with large shell buckles. A few deft pats and her rich hair suited her, and the red rose glowed against the black distractingly. She spun round and round before the mirror of her plain little dresser, one set of knuckles at her waist, like a Spanish dancer, her face trained over her shoulder at her reflection in the glass. There was a mischievous gleam in her jetty eyes as she reached the conclusion that she was all right. Just a hint of heightened colour showed in her cheeks when she started for the living room.
Old Man Selden had not yet returned with the guest of the house. The trace of a pucker of disappointment came between her eyes, then she was serene again as she lighted coal-oil lamps and sat down with a book. She was alone in the great rough-walled room, like a gorgeous flower in a weather-beaten box. Her mother was dressing – one dressed after dinner instead of for dinner in the House of Selden. Bolar and Moffat presumably had gone to sit and look at their saddles while daylight lasted, since coming night forbade them to mount and ride.
Minutes passed. Jessamy stared at the open book in her hands, but had not read a word. Why was Old Man Selden keeping their guest out there in the night? A girlish pout which might have surprised Oliver Drew, had he seen it, puckered her lips. The girl looked down at her red-silk dress and the natty buckles on her French-heel pumps, and the pout grew more pronounced.
She went out doors, but no sound came to her save the intimate night sounds of the wilderness.
"Darn the luck!" she cried in exasperation, her serenity for once completely unavailing.
Five minutes later she stepped from the gorgeous dress with a sigh of resignation. She kicked off the pumps and pulled on her morocco-top riding boots. She donned shirt and riding skirt, and slipped out by her own door into the young night.
Cautiously she approached the stables and corrals, but found nobody. Lights gleamed in the windows of Hurlock's and Winthrop's cabins, and from the latter came the doleful strains of Bolar's accordion. She doubted if Selden and Oliver were in either of these houses.
She walked up the hill toward the spring, and presently heard the bass boom of Old Man Selden's voice.
A little later, flat on the ground, she was wriggling her way through tall ferns toward two indistinct figures seated on a fallen pine. Like an Indian she crept on silently, till by and by she lay quite still, close enough to hear every word that passed between the men who sat in front of her. And her conscience seemed not to trouble her at all.
It had been practicable to come to a pause at some little distance from the two, for their voices carried a long way through the tranquil wilderness night. Behind her and up the hill the frogs were croaking at the spring. Their horse-fiddling ceased abruptly, as if they had been suddenly disturbed, and it was not immediately continued. Trained to read a meaning in Nature's signs, she wondered at this; then presently she heard a stealthy step between her and the spring.
Lifting her head and shoulders above the fronded plants, she saw a dark, crouched shape approaching warily. Some one had walked past the spring and disturbed the croaking choir. She ducked low and waited breathlessly, hoping that this second would-be eavesdropper, whoever he might be, would not come upon her engaged in a like pursuit. At the same time she was trying to hear what Selden was saying to Oliver Drew.
It seemed from Old Adam's slightly hesitating manner that he was as yet not well launched on the subject that had caused him to pilot Oliver to this lonely spot. He said:
"I reckon they told ye ye wouldn't be welcome down on the Old Ivison Place. Didn't some of 'em say, now, that a gang called the Poison Oakers might try to drive ye out? – if I'm not too bold in askin'."
"Yes," said the voice of Oliver Drew.
"Uh-huh! I thought as much. Well, Mr. Drew, ye got to make allowances for ol'-timers in the hills. We get set in our ways, as the fella says; and I reckon we don't like outsiders to come in any too well.
"But anybody with any savvy oughta know its different in a case like yours. Why, what little feed we'd get offen your little piece, if you wasn't there, wouldn't amount to the price of a saddle string. It was plumb loco for any one to tell ye we'd raise a rumpus 'bout ye bein' down there."
"I thought about the same," observed Oliver Drew quietly.
There came a distinct pause in the dialogue. Once more Jessamy straightened her arms and pushed head and shoulders above the ferns. The person who had disturbed the frogs was nowhere to be seen. He too, perhaps, had taken up a lizardlike progress through the ferns, and was now listening to all that was being said by Oliver and Selden.
She flattened herself again, and held one hand behind her ear to catch every word.
"Yes, sir, plumb loco," Old Man Selden reiterated. "And they ain't no reason on earth why you and us can't be the best o' friends. That's what we oughta be, seein' we're pretty near neighbours."
"I'm sure I'm perfectly willing to be friendly, Mr. Selden."
"Course ye are. Just so! An' so are we. And listen here, Mr. Drew: Don't ye put too much stock in that there Poison Oaker racket."
"I don't know that I understand that."
"Well," drawled Selden, "they ain't any such thing as a Poison Oaker Gang. That there's all hot air. It's true that Obed Pence and Jay Muenster and Buchanan and Allegan and Foss run what cows they got with ourn, and they're pretty good friends o' my boys an' me. But as fer us bein' a gang – why, they's nothin' to it. Nothin' to it a-tall! Just because we use a poison-oak leaf for our brand – why, that's what got 'em to callin' us the Poison Oakers. And when anything mean is done in this country, why, they gotta hang it onto somebody – and as a lot of 'em don't like me and my friends, why, they hang it onto us and call us the Poison Oakers. Now that there ain't right and just, is it, Mr. Drew?"
"When you put it that way," Oliver evaded, "I should say that it is not."
"No, sir, it ain't – not a-tall! An' I'm glad ye understand and ain't got no hard feelin's."
There was another long pause. Fragrant tobacco smoke floated to Jessamy's nostrils.
"If I ain't too bold in askin', Mr. Drew – what was ol' Damon Tamroy fillin' yer ear with about me today?"
"He was telling me how Old Dad Sloan had spoken of your having once danced the fire dance."
"Uh-huh! Just so! Some o' my friends overheard Old Dad spoutin' about it after I'd hit the feathers. Well, I don't reckon I care any. It's nothin' to try to hide. Was that all Tamroy had to say?"
Jessamy could imagine on Oliver Drew's lips the grave, half-whimsical smile that she had seen twitching them so often. She waited eagerly for his reply.
"I think that the subject you mention is all that he talked to me about," it came at last.
"Just so! Just so!" muttered Selden. "But didn't he say as how others had danced the fire dance besides me and you?"
"Yes, he mentioned others."
"Just so! And who, now – if I ain't too bold in askin'."
"Let me see," said Oliver after a pause. "Some other man's name was mentioned. A short name, if I remember correctly."
"Uh-huh! Plumb forget her, eh?"
"It seems to me it was Smeed, or something like that. Yes – Dan Smeed."
Silence. Again tobacco smoke was wafted over the ferns.
"Dan Smeed, eh?" ruminated Selden finally. "Mr. Drew, did ye ever hear that name before Damon Tamroy said it to ye?"
Another thoughtful intermission; then —
"Yes, I had heard it before."
"Just so! Just so! And if I ain't too bold in askin' – just where, Mr. Drew?"
"Why, I heard it first from Old Dad Sloan himself. Miss Selden and I rode over to his cabin one morning, and we got him to talking of the days of 'Forty-nine. He can be quite interesting when he doesn't wander."
"Uh-huh! And ye say ye heard the name Dan Smeed over to Old Dad Sloan's fer the first time?"
"Yes, sir."
"The first time in yer life, Mr. Drew?"
"Yes. I had never heard of it until then."
A short, low snort from Selden. Jessamy knew it well. It signified: "I don't believe you!"
Said Selden presently: "Well, then, I'm gonta put another question to ye, Mr. Drew. I don't want ye to think I'm tryin' to butt in, as the fella says. But s'long's Tamroy was talkin' about me, I reckon it's right an' just that I should be interested. Now, what did Tamroy tell ye Old Dad Sloan had to say 'bout this here Dan Smeed and me?"
"He said that you and Dan Smeed were one time partners."
"Oh! Uh-huh! Just so! Partners, eh? And was that the first time ye ever heard that, Mr. Drew?"
"Yes, the first time," said Oliver patiently.
Again that peculiar little snort of Selden.
"How ye gettin' along down to the Old Ivison Place, Mr. Drew?" was Selden's abrupt shift of the conversation.
"Oh, my garden is fine. And I have two colonies of bees storing up honey for me. Besides, I've located another colony up in the hills, and will get them as soon as I can get around to it."
"But ye can't live on garden truck an' honey!"
"I suppose I should have some locusts to go along with them," laughed Oliver; but his flight was lost on Old Man Selden. "You forget, though," the speaker added, "that I am writing for farm journals. I've sold three little articles since I settled down there. I'll get along, if my luck holds out."
"Oh, yes – ye'll get along. I ain't worryin' 'bout that. I'll bet ye could draw a check right this minute that'd pay fer every acre o' land 'tween here an' Calamity Gap."
"I'll bet I couldn't!" Oliver positively denied.
Old Man Selden chuckled craftily. "Ye're pretty foxy, Mr. Drew – pretty foxy!" He had lowered his deep tones until Jessamy could barely distinguish words. "Yes, sir —mighty foxy! A garden an' bees an' writin' for a story paper, eh? Oh, ye'll get along. I'll tell a man ye'll get along!"
"I really have no other source of revenue, Mr. Selden."
"Just so! I understand. Well, Mr. Drew, maybe I been a mite too bold; but I'll step in another inch or two and say this: When ye need any help down there on the Old Ivison Place, just send word to Dan Smeed's partner. D'ye understand?"
"I thank you, I'm sure," Oliver told him dryly. "But really I don't think I'll need any help. My garden is so small that – "
"Just so! Still, ye never can tell when a foxy fella like you'll need help. And Dan Smeed's partner'll be always ready to help. Just remember that."
"Help with what?" asked Oliver testingly.
"In watchin' the dead," was Selden's surprising answer, spoken in a crafty half-whisper.
"In watching the dead!" cried his listener. "Why, I – "
"Le's go in to the womenfolks now," interrupted Selden. "And keep thinkin' over this, Mr. Drew. Always ready to help – d'ye savvy? And don't ye pay no attention to that there supposed gang that they call the Poison Oakers. They ain't no such gang. But if anybody does try to bother ye, tell me. Get me? Tell Dan Smeed's partner. He'll help ye watch the dead."
"You're talking in riddles," Oliver snorted. "I don't understand – "
"Oh, yes, ye do! Ye savvy, all right. Ye're foxy, Mr. Drew. I'll say no more just now. But when ye need my help…"
Their voices trailed off.
Once again the girl's supple body rose from the hips, and she searched the ferns on every side. For several minutes she lay quite still in the same position. Then, perhaps fifty feet on her left, a head rose above the tall fronds, and then a body followed it. Next instant a dark figure was hurrying back toward the spring.
Jessamy waited until sight and sound of it were no more, then rose and ran with all her might toward the house.
She slipped in at her private door, hustled out of her clothes, and began donning her gorgeous red dress again.
"So Old Man Selden always shoots straight from the shoulder, eh?" she muttered. "Piffle! When he wants to be he's a regular Barkis-is-willin'!"
In the midst of her dressing her mother tapped.
"Jessamy, where have you been?" she asked. "Mr. Selden and Mr. Drew are in the living room now. I've knocked twice, but you didn't answer."
"I was outdoors," Jessamy replied. "I'm dressing now. I'll be right out."
And a minute or two later Oliver Drew gasped and his blue eyes grew wide as a silk-garbed figure, with a red rose in her raven hair, glided toward him.
Yea, even as the girl in red had planned that he should gasp!
CHAPTER XVIII
SPIES
Smith, the shaggy, mouse-coloured burro, lifted his voice in that sobbing wail of welcome which has caused his kind to be designated as desert canaries, as Oliver rode into the pasture. Smith's was a gregarious soul. To be left entirely alone was torture. His ears were twelve inches long, and the protuberances over his eyes were so craggy that Oliver had hesitated between the names of Smith and William Cullen Bryant. On the whole, though, "Smith" had seemed more companionable.
Oliver loosed Poche to console the lonesome heart of Smith and went at the irrigating of his garden. When a stream of water was trickling along every hoed furrow he put on heavy hobnailed laced-boots and went into the hills in search of his third bee tree.
It seems illogical to set down that one could live for nearly two months on forty acres of land without having explored every square foot of it. But Oliver had not trod upon at least two thirds of his property. Locked chaparral presents many difficulties. Farmers detest it, and artists go wild over it. But farmers are obliged to sprawl flat and crawl through it occasionally, while artists sit on their stools at a distance from it that brings out all the alluring browns and yellows and greens and olives of which it is capable under the magic of the changing sunlight.
Oliver had seen bees darting like arrows from the flowers in the creekbed in a westerly direction, up over the thickest of the chaparral. Up there somewhere was another colony of winged misers and their hoarded wealth of honey. Honey was bringing a good price just then, and a merchant at Halfmoon Flat would buy it. So now the beeman climbed the hill and crawled into the chaparral in the direction the insects had flown.
Scattered here and there through the dense thicket were pines and spruce and black oak. In one of these trees the bees must have their home; and his task of finding it was not entirely a haphazard quest. When he crawled to an opening in the bushes he would climb into the crotch of one of them and locate the nearest tree. Then, flattening himself once more, he would crawl to this tree and look for a hollow for the bees. Finding none, he would locate another tree and crawl to it.
Thus wearisomely engaged he crawled into a depression three feet deep in the earth beneath him. This allowed him to sit erect for the first time in minutes, and he availed himself of the chance, industriously mopping his brow.
Now, Oliver Drew was not a miner, but he was a son of the outdoor West and knew at once that he was seated in an ancient prospect hole. About the excavation were piled the dirt and stones that had been shovelled out.
He speculated over it. For all he knew, it might date back to the fascinating days of '49. A great forest of pines might have stood here then. Or maybe the pines had been burned away, and a forest of gigantic oaks had followed the conifers, to rear themselves majestically above the pigmies that delved, oftimes impotently, for the glittering yellow treasure at their roots. Or, again, the prospect hole might have been dug years later, after the oaks had disappeared and the chaparral had claimed the land. There was no way of telling, for every decade or so forest fires swept the country almost clean, and some new growth superseded the old in Nature's endless cycle.
Fifty feet farther on he plopped into a second prospect hole, and a little beyond that he found a third.
He noted now that in all cases no chaparral grew up through the muck that had been thrown out. This would seem to signify that the work had been done in recent years, while the bushes that now claimed the land still grew there. He found a fourth hole soon, and near it were manzanita stumps, the tops of which had been cut off with an ax.
This settled it. While the soil might show evidences of the work of man for an interminable length of time, the roots of the lopped-off manzanitas would rot in a decade, perhaps, and freezing weather would loosen the stumps from their moorings. But this wood was still sound. The prospecting had been done not many years before. And who had been prospecting thus on patented land?
When he had wormed his way to the crest of a hill he had passed about twenty of these shallow holes. Now, at the top, the earth had been literally gophered. The workings here looked newer still; and presently he came upon evidence that proved work had been done not longer than a year before, for dry leaves still clung to the tops of manzanita bushes that had been chopped off and pitched to one side.
It has been stated that he was not a miner. Still, having been born and raised in a mining country, he knew something of the geological formations in which gold ordinarily is found. He was in a gold producing country now, yet the specimens that he picked up near the prospect holes proved that only a rank tenderfoot would have searched so persistently in this locality.
He picked up a bit of white substance and gave it study. It resembled lithia. The water of his spring contained a trace of lithium salts, according to the analysis furnished him by the State Agricultural College, to which he had mailed a sample. He pocketed the specimen for future reference.
As he sat on the edge of this hole, with his feet in it, he heard a rustling in the bushes close at hand. At first he thought it might be caused by a jackrabbit; but soon it became certain that some heavier, larger body was making its way slowly through the chaparral.
A coyote? A bobcat? A deer?
He carried no gun today, and the swift thought of a mountain lion was a bit unpleasant.
He quickly slid from his seat and stretched himself on the ground in the shallow excavation. Oliver was an ardent student of nature, and he liked nothing better than secretly to watch some wild thing as it moved about it its customary routine, unconscious of the gaze of human eyes. Once he had hidden in wild grapevines and watched a skunk searching for bugs along a creekbed, until suddenly the moist bank crumbled beneath him, and he fell, and – But what followed is what might be called an unsavory story.
The crackling, scraping sounds drew nearer, but whatever was making them was not moving directly toward him. They ceased abruptly, and then he knew that the man or animal had reached the open space in the brush in which the prospect holes were situated.
As the noises were not continued, he began raising himself slowly, until he was able to look over the edge of the hole.
It was not a browsing deer nor a hunting coyote upon which he gazed. A squat, dark man, with chaps and spurs and Stetson, was making his way across the open space to the continuation of the chaparral beyond it. His eyes were mere slits, black, Mongolic.
He was Digger Foss, the half-white, right-hand man of Adam Selden.
The progress of the gunman was not stealthy, for undoubtedly he considered himself particularly safe from observation up here in the wilderness of chaparral. He slouched bow-leggedly across the break in the thicket, and dropped to hands and knees when he reached the edge of it. He disappeared in the chaparral.
The general direction that he was pursuing was straight toward Oliver's cabin. Oliver lay quite still and listened to the renewed sounds of his progress through the prickly bushes.
Then once more they stopped suddenly. Oliver knew that in the short space of time elapsed Digger Foss could not have crawled beyond the reach of his hearing. He had paused again.
For perhaps five minutes he listened, but could hear no further sounds. Then from not far distant there came the familiar clatter of a dry pine cone in the manzanita tops.
A moment more and Oliver was smiling grimly. For Foss had suddenly appeared above the tops of the chaparral. He was climbing a giant digger pine, which only a short time before Oliver had investigated as the possible home of the bees he was striving to find. There in plain sight the halfbreed was climbing like a bear from limb to limb, keeping the trunk of the tree between his chunky body and the cabin in the valley.
Presently he settled astride a horizontal bough on Oliver's side, his back toward the watcher. He adjusted himself as comfortably as possible, and then there appeared in his hands a pair of binoculars. Leaning around the tree trunk, screened by the digger pine's long, smoke-coloured needles, he focused the glasses on the cabin down below.
It looked to Oliver Drew as if this were not the first time that the gunman had perched himself up there to watch proceedings in the cañon. There had been no hesitancy in his selection of a tree which stood in such a position that other trees would not obstruct his view from its branches, no studying over which limb he might occupy to the best advantage.
Vaguely Oliver wondered how many times he had laboured and moved about down below, with the keen, black, Chinese eyes fixed on him. It was not a comfortable feeling, by any means.
Now, though, his thoughts were taken up by the problem of getting away unobserved by the spyglass man. Digger Foss was not a hundred feet from where Oliver lay and watched him. If he should turn for an instant he would see Oliver there, flat on his face in the excavation, for the halfbreed's perch was twenty feet above the tops of the chaparral.
Oliver had decided to make a try at crawling on up the hill as noiselessly as possible, when new and far slighter sounds came to his ears. So slight they were indeed that, if he had not been close to the earth, he might not have detected them at all.
But no bird or small animal could be responsible for them, for they were continuous and dragging. Once again he hugged the ground while he watched and waited.
The sounds came on – sounds that seemed to be the result of some one's dragging something carefully over the shattered leaves on the ground. And presently there hove into view another human being.
He was an Indian – a Showut Poche-daka. Oliver remembered his swarthy face, his inscrutable eyes. He had been pointed out to him at the fiesta by Jessamy as the champion trailer of all the Paubas, of which the Showut Poche-daka Tribe was a sort of branch. Often, Jessamy had said, this Indian, who was known by the odd and laughable name of Tommy My-Ma, had been employed by the sheriff of the county in tracking down escaped prisoners or fleeing transgressors against the law.
He wore no hat. He was barefooted. His only covering seemed to be a pair of faded-blue overalls and a colourless flannel shirt. Neither did he carry any weapon, so far as Oliver could see.
His progress was now soundless as he came from the chaparral, flat on his belly, wriggling along like a lizard with surprising speed. His black, glittering eyes were unquestionably fixed with rapt intentness on the man aloft in the digger pine; and by reason of this alone he did not see Oliver Drew.
His movements commenced to be extraordinary. He wriggled himself speedily over the unlittered earth and made no sound. There was a pile of dry brush at one edge of the clearing, the tops of the bushes that had been cut off to facilitate the sinking of the prospect holes. Toward this Tommy My-Ma glided; and when he reached it he passed out of sight on the other side.
Then suddenly he reappeared again. Instantly he lowered his head to the ground at the edge of the pile of brush; then swiftly the head and shoulders disappeared, the trunk and legs following. For a second Oliver saw the bare brown feet, then they too went out of sight.
Oliver understood the disappearing act of Tommy My-Ma, he thought. The pile of brush covered another of the prospect holes, and into the hole the Showut Poche-daka had snaked himself. It seemed that he too had sought a hiding place often frequented. In there he perhaps could sit erect and, screened by the pile of brush, would be entirely hidden, while he himself could watch the spy in the branches of the digger pine. For that he was in turn spying on the man who was watching Oliver's cabin Oliver did not for a moment doubt.
But why? That was another matter!
He was quite aware of his own unprotected position; and with Tommy My-Ma now hidden in the brush scarce fifty feet away from him, he dared not get out of his hole and try to crawl away.
The situation struck him as ridiculous in the extreme. Foss trying to spy on him; Tommy My-Ma spying on Foss – the object of all this intrigue, Oliver himself, spying on both of them!
And how long must it continue?
The only sounds now were the soft moaning of the wind through the needles of the pines, and from afar, occasionally, the clear, cool call of a valley quail: "Cut that out! Cut that out!" The sun was hot on the resinous needles of the pines, and the smell of them filled the air.