He would go his own way. There was nothing she could do or say to restrain him. They were not even friends, and even if she had been close to him, it would have made no difference. He was not a man to be swayed by a woman in matters of importance.
They stayed all day and left after dark, on horseback, riding across the south pasture to the boundary of the valley. From here they would ascend Frenchy's Draw into the hills.
Dale watched them go, war in her heart. All her life she had hated the Stevens outfit, lock, stock, and barrel. They had been enemies of her father, to whose memory she was devoted. She was furious at Hal, and all day had been barely civil to him, a fact of which he had been apparently quite oblivious. And all through the hours she had been torn by the knowledge that he possessed her heart wholly. The lean head so live, so strong. The rhythmic motions of his body, smooth and sure. The careless indomitable spirit. They drew her to this gay turbulent foe straight as filings to a magnet. Yet his ways were not hers. They could never be. Both the past and the present were impassable barriers between them. There was, too, the crowning humiliation that his only interest in her was as a source of amusement She ministered to his satiric humor. This alone was enough to keep resentment churning in her.
CHAPTER 17
Brick Fenwick Gives an Order
RANDOLPH ARNOLD rode the west fence of the M K. He had come to repair a break in it reported by one of the men. That was his ostensible motive, but there was another more important one. He wanted to meet and establish contact with some of the men nesting in the tangle of gulches between the M K and Rabbit Ear Gorge.
Arizona had got into his blood. In the clear cool air of early morning, with the sun streaming over the greasewood and the mesquite in a silvery sheen, he was in danger of forgetting that his business here was to uncover evidence to send criminals to their death. This desert atmosphere held some quality exciting as wine, an intoxicant of the spirit that did for him what the vitamin manufacturers claimed for their products. He had discovered that the desert was infinitely variable. It might be one hour an opalescent mirage, the next a bare baked caldron challenging any life to survive. The changing beauty of its sunsets never wearied him.
From the west fence he could look down across the huddled hills to the undulating valley of the Soledad, through which the winding river wound its lazy way. The windmills of the Seven Up and Down flung back glints of sunlight as the blades went round. Back of him was the Rabbit Ear Gorge. Though he had never been there, he had been told that the cañons in and leading to the porphyry range were a maze of crosscut defiles which could be traversed only by those to whom they were as familiar as the lines in the palms of their hands.
He tied his mount to a fencepost and began to work on the broken strand of wire. Occasionally he could see little dust puffs on the valley road stirred by a rider or a wagon. No other sign of human life gave evidence that he had a companion in this great gulf of space. So intent was he on his job that when a drawling voice broke the silence, it startled him.
'You want to anchor that wire better, brother,' it said.
A man was sitting his saddle indolently, body relaxed, gleaming white teeth parted in a smile. He had moved up the sandy wash so silently that no rumor of his coming had reached Arnold.
The tenderfoot gave him back his smile. 'I didn't hear you till you spoke,' he said.
Arnold knew the man by sight. He was the young fellow Brick Fenwick whom he had seen baiting Stevens in the Rest Easy.
The boy swung from the saddle, grounded his reins, and came forward. He took the pliers from Arnold and showed him how the barbed wire should be fastened. The Government man noticed how the long brown fingers of his hands worked with no loss of motion. There was something fascinating about their sureness. No doubt they could handle a gun with expert precision. Yet on more than one occasion, within a week, they had scored two or three misses. Hal Stevens had been lucky.
Fenwick returned the pliers. 'How's the job going?' he asked.
'All right, I guess.' Arnold added ruefully: 'Except that there isn't a thing on a ranch that I can do well. Life in Pittsburgh doesn't fit you for outdoor Arizona.'
'Like it here?'
'Funny thing is that I do. It's raw — elemental. No city conveniences. But you get so you don't miss them.'
'Get along all right with yore boss?'
'I haven't spoken ten sentences to him. My orders come from the foreman Holt.'
Fenwick slid a sharp look at the other. 'If you're a sick man here for yore health, you came to a funny place,' he said.
The tenderfoot showed surprise. 'I've always heard Arizona recommended as the best climate for t.b.'
'Maybe so. There are other things you can die of a heap quicker at the M K.'
There was puzzled innocence in Arnold's questioning gaze. 'I don't know what you mean,' he said.
A cold, fierce challenge shone in the shallow eyes of the gunman. 'Don't tell me you haven't heard that Stevens killed a man the other day at Big Bridge.'
'Sure I've heard about it. But that has nothing to do with me. I'm not in it. I'm a stranger here. Just a hired man.'
'You're in it up to yore neck,' Fenwick told him bluntly. 'Every man that works on the M K is. If Stevens tells you different, he's a liar.'
'But I don't see why I should be,' Arnold protested. 'I haven't been in the state two weeks. These rustlers who attacked Mr. Stevens are strangers to me. I never met any of them. They can't have anything against me.'
'You've got the story wrong,' Fenwick answered impatiently. 'They weren't rustlers, but deputy sheriffs arresting Stevens for holding up a poker game. He drew a gun and killed one of them. Now he is back at his ranch holed-up there. If he wasn't depending on his men to back him, he would have skedaddled out of the country.'
'I'm not backing him. Where I come from we don't get mixed up in feuds. I'm a peaceable citizen.'
'You're packing a gun right now.' The boy's mouth was a thin cruel slash, his eyes tigerish.
'For rattlesnakes. Holt told me they were bad here in the pasture.'
'They've coached you good,' Fenwick jeered. 'Now tell me you don't even know the names of the men trying to arrest yore boss.'
'I heard the boys in the bunkhouse telling their names, but they didn't mean anything to me. Why should they? I tell you I am a stranger. When I got here, I didn't know there was a feud going on in this section.'
'Brick Fenwick was one of the men Stevens tried to kill that day.'
Arnold nodded. 'I remember the name now. I think another name was Frawley.'
'I'm Brick Fenwick,' the boy said, the words low and menacing.
The face of the tenderfoot lit up. 'You were in the Rest Easy the day I got here!' he exclaimed.
'Yore memory is improving,' the young desperado said dryly.
'I understand now,' Arnold replied. 'You are afraid I'm joining Stevens to oppose you.'
Fenwick came a step nearer. His body moved with the litheness of a cat. 'Get this, fellow,' he ordered. 'I'm not afraid of you — or him — or yore whole damned outfit. And I'm not arguing with you. I'm telling you. Get out of this valley. If you're what you claim you are, you have no business in this trouble. Beat it. Vamos. Light out.'
The eyes of Arnold met steadily the arrogant anger in the boyish face of the killer. Not a muscle of his body moved, but there was a change in it, as if the will had stiffened the shoulders and made taut the nerves.
'I'm new to the West, Mr. Fenwick,' he said quietly. 'I like it, because it is more friendly and less formal than the East. What you have just said surprises me. No man with any spirit could make any answer but one. I have as much right here as you have, and I'm going to stay.'