The Fighting Edge, Page 4

  CHAPTER IV

  CLIPPED WINGS

  The Cinderella of Piceance Creek was scrupulously clean even thoughragged and unkempt. Every Saturday night she shooed Pete Tolliver out ofthe house and took a bath in the tub which usually hung suspended from awooden peg driven into the outer wall of the log cabin. Regularly asMonday came wash day.

  On a windy autumn day, with the golden flames of fall burning the foliageof the hill woods, June built a fire of cottonwood branches near thebrook and plunged with fierce energy into the week's washing. She was astrong, lithe young thing and worked rapidly. Her methods might not bethe latest or the best, but they won results. Before the sun had climbedhalfway to its zenith she had the clothes on the line.

  Since she had good soapy suds and plenty of hot water left in the ironkettle, June decided to scrub the bed covers. Twenty minutes later,barefooted and barelegged, her skirts tucked up above the knees, theyoung washwoman was trampling blankets in the tub. She had no reason tosuppose that anybody was within a mile of her. Wherefore, since the worldwas beautiful and mere life a joy, she improvised a child's song ofthanksgiving.

  It was a foolish little thing without rhyme or reason. It began nowhereand finished at the same place. But it lifted straight from the heart andperhaps it traveled as far heavenward as most prayers. She danced amongthe suds as she sang it, brown arms, bare to the elbows, stretched to thesunlit hills.

  Wings--wings--wings! I can fly, 'way 'way 'way off, Over the creek, over the pinons. Goodness, yes! Like a meadow-lark. Over the hills, clear to Denver, Where the trains are. And it's lovely--lovely--lovely.

  It was an unschooled, impulsive cry of the heart to the great soul oflife and beauty that lies back of nature. No human eyes or ears weremeant to see or hear the outburst. A shy girl's first day-dreams of herlover ought no more to be dragged out to the public gaze than this.

  Through the quaking asps by the creek narrowed eyes gloated. Out of thethicket Jake Houck strode with a ribald laugh.

  "Right pretty, my dear, but don't you spread them wings an' leave yoreman alone."

  The dancing spirit fled her flying feet. She was no longer a daughter ofthe skies, attuned to sunshine and laughter and the golden harmony of thehills. Joy and life were stricken out of her.

  He had heard. He had seen. A poignant shame enveloped and scorched thegirl's body. She was a wild thing who lived within herself. It was easyto put her in the wrong. She felt the mortification of one who has beencaught in some indecent exhibition.

  The humiliation was at first for the song and dance. Not till anothermoment did she think of the bare legs rising out of the soapsuds. Hissmouldering gaze brought them to mind.

  Instantly she leaped from the tub, shook down the skirts, snatched upshoes and stockings, and fled barefooted to the house. A brogan dropped afew steps from the start. She stopped, as though to pick it up. But Houckwas following. The girl turned and ran like a deer.

  Houck retrieved the brogan and followed slowly. He smiled. His close-seteyes were gleaming. This was an adventure just to his taste.

  The door of the cabin was bolted. He knocked.

  "Here's yore shoe, sweetheart," he called.

  No answer came. He tried the back door. It, too, had the bolt drivenhome.

  "All right. If it ain't yore shoe I'll take it along with me. So long."

  He walked away and waited in the bushes. His expectation was that thismight draw her from cover. It did not.

  Half an hour later Tolliver rode across the mesa. He found Houck waitingfor him at the entrance to the corral. Pete nodded a rather surlygreeting. He could not afford to quarrel with the man, but he was one ofthe last persons in the world he wanted to see.

  "'Lo, Jake," he said. "Back again, eh?"

  "Yep. Finished my business. I got to have a talk with you, Pete."

  Tolliver slid a troubled gaze at him. What did Jake want? Was itmoney--hush money? The trapper did not have fifty dollars to his name,nor for that matter twenty.

  "'S all right, Jake. If there's anything I can do for you--why, all yougot to do's to let me know," he said uneasily.

  Houck laughed, derisively. "Sure. I know how fond you are of me, Pete.You're plumb glad to see me again, ain't you? Jes' a-honin' to talk overold times, I'll bet."

  "I'd as lief forget them days, Jake," Tolliver confessed. "I done turnedover another chapter, as you might say. No need rakin' them up, lookslike."

  The big man's grin mocked him. "Tha's up to you, Pete. Me, I aim to bereasonable. I ain't throwin' off on my friends. All I want's to make surethey _are_ my friends. Pete, I've took a fancy to yore June. I reckonI'll fix it up an' marry her."

  His cold eyes bored into Tolliver. They held the man's startled, waveringgaze fixed.

  "Why, Jake, you're old enough to be her father," he presently faltered.

  "Maybe I am. But if there's a better man anywheres about I'd like to meetup with him an' have him show me. I ain't but forty-two, Pete, an' I canwhip my weight in wild cats."

  The father's heart sank. He knew Houck. The man would get by hook orcrook what he wanted. He could even foretell what his next move wouldbe.

  "She's only a kid, Jake, not thinkin' none about gettin' married. In ayear or two, maybe--"

  "I'm talkin' about now, Pete--this week."

  Tolliver wriggled, like a trout on the hook. "What does she say? Youspoke of it to her?"

  "Sure. She'll like it fine when she gets her mind used to it. I know howto handle women, Pete. I'm mentionin' this to you because I want you touse yore influence. See?"

  Pete saw, too well. He moistened his lips with the tip of the tongue."Why, I don't reckon I could very well do that. A girl's got to make upher own mind. She's too young to be figurin' on marryin'. Better give hertime."

  "No." Houck flung the word out like an oath. "Now. Right away."

  The trapper's voice took on a plaintive note, almost a whine. "You wassayin' yoreself, Jake, that she'd have to get used to it. Looks like itwouldn't be good to rush--"

  "She can get used to it after we're married."

  "O' course I want to do what's right by my li'l' June. You do too forthat matter. We wouldn't either one of us do her a meanness."

  "I'm going to marry her," Houck insisted harshly.

  "When a girl loses her mother she's sure lost her best friend. It's up toher paw to see she gets a square deal." There was a quaver of emotion inTolliver's voice. "I don't reckon he can make up to her--"

  A sound came from Houck's throat like a snarl. "Are you tryin' to tell methat Pete Tolliver's girl is too good for me? Is that where you'redriftin'?"

  "Now don't you get mad, Jake," the older man pleaded. "These here aredifferent times. I don't want my June mixed up with--with them Brown'sPark days an' all."

  "Meanin' me?"

  "You're twistin' my words, Jake," the father went on, an anxious desireto propitiate frowning out of the wrinkled face. "I ain't sayin' a wordagainst you. I'm explainin' howcome I to feel like I do. Since I--bumpedinto that accident in the Park--"

  Houck's ill-natured laugh cut the sentence. It was a jangled dissonancewithout mirth. "What accident?" he jeered.

  "Why--when I got into the trouble--"

  "You mean when Jas Stuart caught you rustlin' an' you murdered him an'went to the pen. That what you mean?" he demanded loudly.

  Tolliver caught his sleeve. "S-sh! She don't know a thing about it. Yourecollect I told you that."

  The other nodded, hard eyes gloating over the rancher's distress. "An' o'course she don't know you broke jail at Canyon City an' are liable to bedragged back if any one should happen to whisper to the sheriff."

  "Not a thing about all that. I wouldn't holler it out thataway if I wasyou, Jake," Tolliver suggested, glancing nervously toward the house."Maybe I ought to 'a' told her, but I never did. Her maw died of it, an'I jes' couldn't make out to tell June. You see yoreself how it would be,Pete. Her a li'l' trick with nobody but me. I ain't no great shakes,
butat that I'm all she's got. I figured that 'way off here, under anothername, they prob'ly never would find me."

  "Pretty good guess, Pete Purdy."

  "Don' call me that," begged Tolliver.

  Houck showed his teeth in an evil grin. "I forgot. What I was sayin' wasthat nobody knows you're here but me. Most folks have forgot all aboutyou. You can fix things so 's to be safe enough."

  "You wouldn't give me away, Jake. You was in on the rustlin' too. We waspals. It was jes' my bad luck I met up with Jas that day. I didn't beginthe shooting. You know that."

  "I ain't likely to give away my own father-in-law, am I?"

  Again the close-set, hard eyes clamped fast to the wavering ones of thetortured outlaw. In them Tolliver read an ultimatum. Notice was beingserved on him that there was only one way to seal Houck's lips.

  That way he did not want to follow. Pete was a weak father, anineffective one, wholly unable to give expression to the feeling that attimes welled up in him. But June was all his life now held. He sufferedbecause of the loneliness their circumstances forced upon her. The bestwas what he craved for her.

  And Jake Houck was a long way from the best. He had followed rough andevil trails all his life. As a boy, in his cowpuncher days, he had beenhard and callous. Time had not improved him.

  June came to the door of the cabin and called.

  "What is it, honey?" Tolliver asked.

  "He's got my shoe. I want it."

  Pete looked at the brogan sticking out of Jake's pocket. The big fellowforestalled a question.

  "I'll take it to her," he said.

  Houck strode to the house.

  "So it's yore shoe after all," he grinned.

  "Give it here," June demanded.

  "Say pretty please."

  She flashed to anger. "You're the meanest man I ever did meet."

  "An' you're the prettiest barelegged dancer on the Creek," he countered.

  June stamped the one shoe she was wearing. "Are you going to give me thatbrogan or not?"

  "If you'll let me put it on for you."

  Furious, she flung round and went back into the house.

  He laughed delightedly, then tossed the heavy shoe into the room afterher. "Here's yore shoe, girl. I was only foolin'," he explained.

  June snatched up the brogan, stooped, and fastened it.