Prairie Flowers.

by James B. Hendryx.

A PROLOGUE

The grey roadster purred up the driveway, and Alice Endicott thrust the "home edition" aside and hurried out onto the porch to greet her husband as he stepped around from the garage.

"Did the deal go through?" she asked, as her eyes eagerly sought the eyes of the man who ascended the steps.

"Yes, dear," laughed Endicott, "the deal went through. You see before you a gentleman of elegant leisure--foot-loose, and unfettered--free to roam where the G.o.ds will."

"Or will not," laughed his wife, giving him a playful hug. "But, oh, Win, aren't you glad! Isn't it just grand to feel that you don't have to go to the horrible, smoky old city every morning? And don't the soft air, and the young leaves, and the green gra.s.s, and the nesting birds make you _crazy_ to get out into the big open places? To get into a saddle and just ride, and ride, and ride? Remember how the sun looked as it rose like a great ball of fire beyond the miles and miles of open bench?"

Endicott grinned: "And how it beat down on us along about noon until we could fairly feel ourselves shrivel----"

"And how it sank to rest behind the mountains. And the long twilight glow. And how the stars came out one by one. And the night came deliciously cool--and how good the blankets felt."

The man's glance rested upon the close-cropped lawn where the grackles and robins were industriously picking up their evening meal. "You love the country out there--you must love it, to remember only the sunrises, and the sunsets, and the stars; and forget the torture of long hours in the saddle and that terrific downpour of rain that burst the reservoir and so nearly cost us our lives, and the dust storm in the bad lands, and that night of horrible thirst. Why those few days we spent in Montana, between the time of the wreck at Wolf River and our wedding at Timber City, were the most tumultuously adventurous days of our lives!"

His wife's eyes were shining: "Wasn't it awful--the suspense and the excitement! And, yet, wasn't it just grand? We'll never forget it as long as we live----"

Endicott smiled grimly: "We never will," he agreed, with emphasis. "A man isn't likely to forget--things like that."

Alice seated herself upon the porch lounge where her husband joined her, and for several minutes they watched a robin divide a fat worm between the scrawny necked fledglings that thrust their ugly mouths above the edge of the nest in the honeysuckle vine close beside them.

"It was nearly a year ago, Win," the girl breathed, softly; "our anniversary is just thirteen days away."

"And you still want to spend it in Timber City?"

"Indeed I do! Why it would just break my heart not to be right there in that ugly little wooden town on that day."

"And you really--seriously--want to live out there?"

"Of course I do! Why wouldn't anyone want to live there? That's real living--with the wonderful air, and the mountains, and the boundless unfenced range! Not right in Timber City, or any of the other towns, but on a ranch, somewhere. We could stay there till we got tired of it, and then go to California, or New York, or Florida for a change. But we could call the ranch home, and live there most of the time. Now that you have closed out your business, there is no earthly reason why we should live in this place--it's neither east nor west, nor north, nor south--it's just half way between everything. I wish we would hear from that Mr. Carlson, or whatever his name is so we could go and look over his ranch the day after our anniversary."

"His name is Colston, and we have heard," smiled Endicott. "I got word this morning."

"Oh, what did he say?"

"He said to come and look the property over. That he was willing to sell, and that he thought there was no doubt about our being able to arrange satisfactory terms."

"Oh, Win, aren't you glad! You must sit right down after dinner and write him. Tell him we'll----"

"I wired him this afternoon to meet us in Timber City."

"Let's see," Alice chattered, excitedly, "it will take--one night to Chicago, and a day to St. Paul, and another day and night, and part of the next day--how many days is that? One, two nights, and two days and a half--that will give us ten days to sell the house and pack the furniture and ship it----"

"Ship it!" exclaimed the man. "We better not do any shipping till we buy the ranch. The deal may not go through----"

"Well, Mr. What's-his-name don't own the only ranch in Montana. If we don't buy his, we'll buy another one. You better see that Mr.

Schwabheimer tomorrow--he's wanted this place ever since we bought it, and he's offered more than we paid."

"Oh, it won't be any trouble to sell the house. But, about shipping the furniture until we're sure----"

Alice interrupted impetuously: "We'll ship it right straight away--because when we get it out there we'll just have to buy a ranch to put it in!"

Endicott surrendered with a gesture of mock despair: "If that's the way you feel about it, I guess we'll have to buy. But, I'll give you fair warning--it will be up to you to help run the outfit. I don't know anything about the cattle business----"

"We'll find Tex! And we'll make him foreman--and then, when we get all settled I'll invite Margery Demming out for a long visit--I've picked out Margery for Tex--and we can put them up a nice house right near ours, and Margery and I can----"

"Holy Mackerel!" laughed Endicott. "Just like that! Little things don't matter at all--like the fact that we haven't any ranch yet to invite her to, and that she might not come if you did invite her, and if she did come she might not like the country or Tex, or he might not like her.

And last of all, we may never find Tex. We've both written him a half a dozen times--and all the letters have been returned. If we had some ham, we'd have some ham and eggs, if we had some eggs!"

"There you go, with your old practicability! Anyhow, that's what we'll do--and if Tex don't like her I'll invite someone else, and keep on inviting until I find someone he does like--and as for her--no one could help loving the country, and no one could help loving Tex--so there!"

"I hope the course of their true love will run less tempestuously than ours did for those few days we were under the chaperonage of the Texan,"

grinned the man.

"Of course it will! It's probably very prosaic out there, the same as it is anywhere, most of the time. It was a peculiar combination of circ.u.mstances that plunged us into such a maelstrom of adventure. And yet--I don't see why you should hope for such a placid courtship for them. It took just that ordeal to bring out your really fine points.

They were there all the time, dear, but I might never have known they were there. Why, I've lived over those few days, step by step, a hundred times! The wreck, the celebration at Wolf River--" she paused and shuddered, and her husband took up the sequence, mercilessly:

"And your ride with Purdy, and Old Bat thrusting the gun into my hand and urging me to follow--and when I looked up and saw you both on the rim of the bench and saw him drag you from your horse--then the mad dash up the steep trail, and the quick shot as he raised above the sage brush--and then, the fake lynching bee--only it was very real to me as I stood there in the moonlight under that cottonwood limb with a noose about my neck. And then the long ride through the night, and the meeting with you at the ford where you were waiting with Old Bat----"

"And the terrible thunder storm, and the bursting reservoir, and the dust storm in the bad lands," continued the girl. "Oh, it was all so--so horrible, and yet--as long as I live I will be glad to have lived those few short days. I learned to know men--big, strong men in action--what they will do--and what they will not do. The Texan with his devil-may-care ways that masked the real character of him. And you, darling--the real you--who had always remained hidden beneath the veneer of your culture and refinement. Then suddenly the veneer was knocked off and for the first time in your life the fine fibre of you--the real _stuff_ you are made of, got the chance to a.s.sert itself. You stood the test, dear--stood it as not one man in a hundred who had lived your prosaic well-ordered life would have stood it----"

"Nonsense!" laughed the man. "You're grossly prejudiced. You were in love with me anyway--you know you were. You would have married me in time."

"I was not! I wasn't a bit in love with you--and I wouldn't have married you ever, if it hadn't been for the test." She paused suddenly, and her eyes became serious, "But Win, Tex stood the test too--and he really did love me. Do you know that my heart just aches for that boy, out there all alone in the country he loves--for he _is_ of different stuff than the rest of them. He likes the men--he is one of them--but he would never choose a wife from among their women, and his big heart is just yearning for a woman's love. I shall never forget the last time I saw him--in that little open glade in the timber. He had lost, and he knew it--and he stood there with his arm thrown over the neck of his horse, staring out over the broad bench toward the mountains that showed hazy-blue in the distance. He was game to the last fibre of him. He tried to conceal his hurt, but he could not conceal it. He spoke highly of you--said you were a _man_--and that I had made no mistake in my choice--and then he spoke the words that filled my cup of happiness to the brim--he told me that you had not killed Purdy--that there was no blood on your hands--and that you were not a fugitive from the law.

"Win, dear--we must find him--we've got to find him!"

"We'll find him--little girl," answered her husband as his arm stole about her shoulders; "I'm just as anxious to find him as you are--_and in ten days we will start_!"

CHAPTER I

AN ANNIVERSARY

The Texan drew up in the centre of a tiny glade that formed an opening in the bull pine woods. Haze purpled the distant mountains of cow-land, and the cowpuncher's gaze strayed slowly from the serried peaks of the Bear Paws to rest upon the broad expanse of the barren, mica-studded bad lands with their dazzling white alkali beds, and their brilliant red and black mosaic of lava rock that trembled and danced and shimmered in the crinkly waves of heat. For a long time he stared at the Missouri whose yellow-brown waters rolled wide and deep from recent rains. From the silver and gold of the flashing waters his eyes strayed to the smoke-grey sage flats that intervened, and then to the cool dark green of the pines.

Very deliberately he slipped from the saddle, letting the reins fall to the ground. He took off his Stetson and removed its thin powdering of white alkali dust by slapping it noisily against his leather chaps. A light breeze fanned his face and involuntarily his eyes sought the base of a huge rock fragment that jutted boldly into the glade, and as he looked, he was conscious that the air was heavy with the scent of the little blue and white prairie flowers that carpeted the ground at his feet. His thin lips twisted into a cynical smile--a smile that added an unpleasant touch to the clean-cut weather-tanned features. In the s.p.a.ce of a second he seemed to have aged ten years--not physically, but--he had aged.

He spoke half aloud, with his grey eyes upon the rock: "It--hurts--like h.e.l.l. I knew it would hurt, an' I came--rode sixty miles to get to this spot at this hour of this day. It was here she said 'good-bye,' an' then she walked slowly around the rock with her flowers held tight, an' the wind ripplin' that lock of hair, just above her right temple, it was--an' then--she was gone." The man's eyes dropped to the ground. A brilliantly striped beetle climbed laboriously to the top of a weed stem, spread his wings in a clumsy effort, and fell to the ground. The cowboy laughed: "A h.e.l.l of a lot of us that would like to fly has to crawl," he said, and stooping picked a tiny flower, stared at it for a moment, breathed deeply of its fragrance, and thrust it into the band of his hat. Reaching for his reins, he swung into the saddle and once more his eyes sought the painted bad lands with their background of purple mountains. "Prettiest place in the world, I reckon--to look at. Mica flashin' like diamonds, red rocks an' pink ones, white alkali patches, an' black cool-lookin' mud-cracks--an' when you get there--poison water, rattlesnakes, chokin' hot dust, horse-thieves, an' the white bones of dead things! Everything's like that. Come on, old top horse, you an'

I'll shove on to Timber City. 'Tain't over a mile, an' when we get there--! Say boy, little old unsuspectin' Timber City is goin' to stage an orgy. We don't aim to pull off no common sordid drunk--not us. What we'll precipitate is goin' to be a cla.s.sic--a jamboree of sorts, a baccha.n.a.lian cataclysm, aided an' abetted by what local talent an'