Max Brand

The Return of the Rancher

Warsaw 2019

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI

CHAPTER XLII

CHAPTER XLIII

CHAPTER I

WHEN the stage left the town of Sage Valley on the last lap of the journey to Claymore, Jimmy Seton found that there was only one passenger with him in the coach. She was young, she was pretty, she was always smiling; but, though Seton liked a pretty face as well as the next man, he did not speak to her, because none of the smiles were for him.

Whether she looked at the ragged mountainsides that jumped up around them, or at the hardy patches of evergreens, or at the hell-nests of rocks which blazed in the sun, or at the spinning wheels, or turned to view the dust cloud which tossed up continually behind and sometimes overtook them, she was always smiling. Water does not bubble from a spring more continually than the smiles of this girl welled up on her lips.

It is pleasant to see a smiling face, but Seton began to be a little disturbed. He was young enough–he was not yet thirty, in fact–and, if he was no Adonis, at least he was born with a cheerful eye and a clean look. Still, to this bright-eyed little beauty he seemed no more than a mist, a phantom.

So he set himself to watching the backs of the driver and the guard. The driver was in shirtsleeves. His blue flannel shirt was powdered white with dust. The guard wore a vest, and the unfastened buckle of it was always bouncing up and down. It fascinated Seton and made him rather nervous. He admired that guard. He admired the brown-black to which his neck was burned; the ease with which the veteran gave to the joltings and the jars of the big vehicle on that rough road; the eternal vigilance which kept his head turning a bit from side to side, lest, out of the shrubbery or from one of the barricades of rocks, heads and shoulders of armed men might rise and leveled rifles cover the stage. Across his knees was a shotgun. Behind him, laid along the seat with a muzzle pointing out, was a fifteen-shot Winchester. He was a fighting man, and the type which Seton could appreciate. He thought with a certain awe of the way this fellow cruised above the dust cloud, above the leaping mud, winter and summer, along this same route.

They climbed slowly to the divide, and then lurched down the narrow ravine which widened beneath them into Claymore Valley. Claymore itself, at the mouth of the valley, was not yet in sight. This was a different country. The south winds, forced up along the valley and collected, dropped their rain in sufficient quantity to keep Claymore Valley green all through the year, except in September. The ground was more rolling, too. The olive-gray bleakness on the farther side of the divide, the naked rocks, the heat, the desolation were here replaced by a comfortable sense that man would find life pleasant in this valley.

Most of the way was now downhill, winding along the drop of the valley floor, so they went on at a good cantering pace, skidding and heeling like a ship on the corners, and squirting the dust far out to the side. All the tall grass and the flowering weeds along the way were already chalk-white from similar dustings.

A little runlet made a dark streak across the road. The driver jammed on his brake with foot and hand, but the wheels were still running fast when they struck the soft mud. They cut through it to hardpan and the stage crossed over with a tremendous jolt and groaning. It heeled so far that the girl cried out and leaped to her feet.

Seton caught her by the arm and jerked her back.

“Hang on, and you’ll be all right,” said he.

She turned squarely to him, at last, and she began to laugh. Those straight eyes of hers, and the childish laugh which flowed and bubbled effortlessly from her lips pleased him still more. He grinned broadly back at her.

“I was silly,” said she. “I was thinking of something else when we went crash.”

“Yeah. You better watch the road,” said Seton. “They have a bad spill, once in a while.” He pointed back. “That last corner, a fellow turned himself over out of a buggy.”

“Heavens! Was he hurt?”

“Hurt? Well, you can see for yourself. There’s a fifty-foot drop from the edge of the road, and he fell the whole ways.”

She closed her eyes with a shudder.

“He was killed, then?”

“Killed? He was all spread out. It looked like something had run a crusher over him. You going to stop off at Claymore?”

“Yes. I live there. Do you?”

“I used to live there. I’m going to try to live there again.”

“Oh, you’ll find it easy. Claymore’s the finest town in the world.”

“I used to think that way myself.”

“You won’t change your mind. My father says he’d rather be here than any other place he knows about, and he’s traveled a lot.”

“You live right in the town?”

“No. About a mile out. He’s got a ranch.”

“On what road?”

“On the valley road.”

“A mile out? Used to be the Benson place, along about there.”

“That’s the very one.”

“Go on!”

“That’s the place. Father bought it.”

“That used to be a mighty good-sized piece of land. Three-four thousand acres, I’d say.”

“It hasn’t shrunk much,” said the girl.

“Well, it was worth a pile of money in the old days.”

“Yes. Father paid forty an acre for it.”

“Hold on. Forty an acre? Has there been gold or something struck on that–”

She did not wait for the last of his speech but answered the first part.

She nodded and smiled at him very complacently.

“Yes, we got the place very cheap. Douglas Walters happens to be a friend of ours,” she added, with much pride.

He nodded in turn.

“Yeah?” said he.

“You know him?”

“You better believe I know him!”

“He’s wonderful, isn’t he?” said the girl.

In her enthusiasm, she had to lean a little toward her traveling companion and give him the full benefit of her smile.

He enjoyed this for half a second before he replied:

“I’ll say I never knew anybody like Doug Walters.”

“He’s so big and handsome!” said the girl.

“He’s handsome; and he’s big,” assented Seton, gravely.

He began to watch her with a narrower curiosity. She was flushed with happiness, and he began to guess why she was so continually smiling at nothing at all. There was a light inside her. She carried, it seemed, an unalterable warmth in her heart.

Perhaps Douglas Walters was the source of it.

“Doug helped you get the Benson place for forty dollars an acre, did he?”

“Yes. We never could have managed it otherwise, I suppose! But he knows just how to do everything!”

“Does he?” said Seton.

He had recourse to rolling a cigarette.

“I guess he’s foreman for you now, then?”

“Yes, he runs everything for us. It’s wonderful, really. He hires and fires and plans–Father isn’t very practical. You know Douglas for a long time?” she added, as though she felt that she had been confiding too much in a stranger and wished to be reassured.

“Let me see,” said Seton, reflectively. “I’ve known him about twenty-five years.”

“Gracious!” said the girl.

She clasped her hands together and beamed at him with more friendship than ever.

“Twenty-five years!” she said. “What a lot!”

“Yes, it was quite a lot,” said Seton, gravely. “But the last five years I haven’t seen him.”

“No? Not once?”

“No, I’ve been away.”

“What a pity,” said she. “He’ll be frightfully excited when he hears that I came up on the stage with you, won’t he?”

“I think maybe he’ll be excited when he hears that I’m back,” said Seton.

“Of course, he will. After five years?”

“Yes, it’s quite a stretch.”

“You haven’t told me your name.”

“I’m Jim Seton.”

“I’m Mary Ash. Molly, I should say. Everybody calls me Molly–and you know Douglas so well. He’ll be so glad to see you!”

The smile of Seton came and went, all in a flash.

“Well,” he said, “he’s going to see me, all right. How long have you folks been around these parts?”

“About three months, now.”

“Three months, eh?”

“Yes. Father wasn’t very well in the city. The doctors advised the country life for him. And we’re so lucky that we found Douglas to take charge of everything.”

“He can take charge of everything, all right,” said Seton. “How’d your father meet him?”

“You’d laugh! It was in a poker game in the Sage Valley hotel. He won quite a lot from Daddy.”

“Yeah. He generally wins at cards.”

“But what a lucky thing that meeting was!”

“Was it?”

“Why, it saved my father’s life.”

“How come?”

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