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Page 89
A note from Slim, written at Fort Grant, with a lead-pencil, on a
sheet of manila paper, told her briefly that he was going into
the Lava Beds with the troops--as the Apaches were out. Dick and
Jack, he wrote, were somewhere in the Lava Beds, and he would
bring them back with him. She dared not let herself think of the
Apaches and the horrors of their cruelties.
"Better let me get you somethin' to eat," said her father,
returning from picketing the horses.
Echo smiled wanly at her father's solicitude. "I am not hungry,
Dad."
Jim seated himself by the fire. He recognized his helplessness
in this trouble. There was nothing he could do. If one of the
boys was what Allen would have called it, "down on his luck," he
would have asked him to have a drink, but with Josephine and the
girls he was at his wit's end. The sufferings of his loved
daughter cut deeply into his big heart.
"You been in the saddle since sunup," he said. "You hain't had
nuthin' to eat since breakfast--I don't see what keeps you
alive."
"Hope, Dad, hope. It is what we women live upon. Some cherish
it all their lives, and never reap a harvest. I watch the sun
leap over the edge of the world at dawn, and hope that before it
sinks behind the western hills the man I love will come home to
my heart. Oh, Dad, I'm not myself! I haven't been myself since
the day I sent him away--my heart isn't here. It's out in the
desert behind yon mountains--with Jack."
"Thar, thar, don't take on so, honey."
Kneeling beside her father, she laid her head on his lap, as she
did in childhood when overwhelmed with the little troubles of the
hour. Looking into his eyes, she sighed: "Oh, Dad, it's all so
tangled. I haven't known a peaceful moment since he went away.
I've sent him away into God knows what unfriendly lands, perhaps
never to return--never to know how much I loved him."
Patting her head, as if she were a tired child, he said: "It'll
all come out right in the end. You can't never tell from the
sody-card what's in hock at the bottom of the deck."
Further confidences between father and daughter were interrupted
by the boys of the round-up dashing up to the wagon, with Peruna
in the midst of the group. Peruna had been disarmed. Dragging
the prisoner from his bronco, they led him before Allen, who had
risen from his seat.
"What's all this, boys?" asked the ranchman.
Sage-brush, as foreman, explained: "This yere's Peruna of the
Lazy K outfit."
Allen looked at the prisoner, who maintained a sullen silence.
"What's he been doin'?"
"Mostly everything, but Fresno caught red-handed brandin' one of
our yearlin's," cried Sage-brush.
"It's a lie!" broke in Peruna, glancing doggedly from one to
another of his guards. He knew death was the penalty of the
crime of which he stood accused. He felt that a stout denial
would gain him time, and that Buck and his outfit might come up
and save him.
"Polite your conversation in the presence of a lady," cried
Parenthesis, nodding toward Echo.
"That calf was follerin' my cow," answered Peruna sullenly.
"It was follerin' one of our longhorned Texas cows with the
Sweetwater brand spread all over her," shouted Show Low, moving
menacingly toward the cowering Peruna.
"Fresno he calls him," continued Sage-brush, taking up the story;
"an' this yere Peruna--drinking bad turns loose his battery and
wings Fresno some bad--then little Billie Nicker comes along, and
Peruna plugs him solid."
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