The Fighting Shepherdess.

by Caroline Lockhart.

CHAPTER I

THE SAND COULEE ROADHOUSE

A heavily laden freight wagon, piled high with ranch supplies, stood in the dooryard before a long loghouse. The yard was fenced with crooked cottonwood poles so that it served also as a corral, around which the leaders of the freight team wandered, stripped of their harness, looking for a place to roll.

A woman stood on tip-toe gritting her teeth in exasperation as she tugged at the check-rein on the big wheelhorse, which stuck obstinately in the ring. When she loosened it finally, she stooped and looked under the horse's neck at the girl of fourteen or thereabouts, who was unharnessing the horse on the other side. "Good G.o.d, Kate," exclaimed the woman irritably; "how many times must I tell you to unhook the traces before you do up the lines? One of these days you'll have the d.a.m.nedest runaway in seven states."

The girl, whose thoughts obviously were not on what she was doing, obeyed immediately, and without replying looped up the heavy traces, throwing and tying the lines over the hames with experienced hands.

The resemblance between mother and daughter was so slight that it might be said not to exist at all. It was clear that Kate's wide, thoughtful eyes, generous mouth and softly curving but firm chin came from the other side, as did her height. Already she was half a head taller than the short, wiry, tough-fibered woman with the small hard features who was known throughout the southern half of Wyoming as "Jezebel of the Sand Coulee."

A long flat braid of fair hair swung below the girl's waist and on her cheeks a warm red showed through the golden tan. Her slim straight figure was eloquent of suppleness and strength and her movements, quick, purposeful, showed decision and activity of mind. They were as characteristic as her directness of speech.

The Sand Coulee Roadhouse was a notorious place. The woman who kept it called herself Isabel Bain--Bain having been the name of one of the numerous husbands from whom she had separated to remarry in another state, without the formality of a divorce. She was noted not only for her remarkable horsemanship, but for her exceptional handiness with a rope and branding iron, and her inability to distinguish her neighbors'

livestock from her own.

"Pete Mullendore's gettin' in." There was a frown on Kate's face as she spoke and uneasiness in the glance she sent toward the string of pack-horses filing along the fence.

The woman said warningly, "Don't you pull off any of your tantrums--you treat him right."

"I'll treat him right," hotly, "as long as he behaves himself. Mother,"

with entreaty in her voice, "won't _you_ settle him if he gets fresh?"

Jezebel only laughed and as the gate of the corral sc.r.a.ped when Mullendore pulled it open to herd a saddle horse and pack ponies through, she called out in her harsh croak:

"h.e.l.lo, Pete!"

"h.e.l.lo yourself," he answered, but he looked at her daughter.

As soon as they were through the gate the pack ponies stopped and stood with spreading legs and drooping heads while Mullendore sauntered over to Kate and laid a hand familiarly on her shoulder.

"Ain't you got a howdy for me, kid?"

She moved aside and began stripping the harness from the horse for the quite evident purpose of avoiding his touch.

"You'd better get them packs off," she replied, curtly. "Looks like you'd got on three hundred pounds."

"Wouldn't be surprised. Them bear traps weigh twenty poun' each, and green hides don't feel like feathers, come to pack 'em over the trail I've come."

Kate looked at him for the first time.

"I wisht I was a man! I bet I'd work you over for the way you abuse your stock!"

Mullendore laughed.

"Glad you ain't, Katie--but not because I'd be afraid of gettin' beat up."

He looked her up and down with mocking significance, "Say, but you'll make a great squaw for some feller. Been thinkin' I'd make a deal with your mother to take you back to the mountings with me when I go. I'll learn you how to tan hides, and a lot of things you don't know."

The girl's lip curled.

"Yes, I'd _like_ to tan hides for _you_, Pete Mullendore! When I get frost bit in August I'll go, but not before."

He replied easily:

"You ain't of age yet, Katie, and you have to mind your maw. I've got an idee that she'll tell you to go if I say so."

"A whole lot my mother would mind what you say!" Yet in spite of her defiance a look of fear crossed the girl's face.

She slipped her arm through the harness and started towards the shed, Mullendore following with his slouching walk, an unprepossessing figure in his faded overalls, black and white mackinaw coat and woolen cap.

The trapper was tall and lank, with a pair of curious, unforgettable eyes looking out from a swarthy face that told of Indian blood. They were round rather than the oblong shape to be expected in his type, and the iris a muddy blue-gray. The effect was indescribably queer, and was accentuated by the coal-black lashes and straight black brows which met above a rather thick nose. He had a low forehead, and when he grinned his teeth gleamed like ivory in his dark face. He boasted of Apache-Mexican blood "with a streak of white."

While Kate hung the harness on its peg, Mullendore, waited for her outside. "My! My! Katie," he leered at her as she came back, "but you're gettin' to be a big girl! Them legs looked like a couple of pitchfork handles when I went away, and now the shape they've got!"

He laughed in malicious enjoyment as he saw the color rise to the roots of her hair; and when she would have pa.s.sed, reached out and grasped her arm.

"Let me be, Pete Mullendore!" She tried to pull loose.

"When you've give me a kiss." There was a flame in the muddy eyes.

With a twist she freed herself and cried with fury vibrating in her voice, "I hate you--I hate you! You--" she sought for a sufficiently opprobrious word--"n.i.g.g.e.r!"

Mullendore's face took on a peculiar ashiness. Then with an oath and a choking snarl of rage he jumped for her. Kate's long braid just escaped his finger tips.

"Mother! Mother! Make him quit!" There was terror in the shrill cry as the girl ran towards the freight wagon. The response to the appeal came in a hard voice:

"You needn't expect me to take up your fights. You finish what you start."

Kate gave her mother a despairing look and ran towards the pack ponies, with Mullendore now close at her heels. Spurred by fear, she dodged in and out, doubling and redoubling, endeavoring to keep a pony between herself and her pursuer. Once or twice a fold of her skirt slipped through his grasp, but she was young and fleet of foot, and after the game of hare and hounds had kept up for a few minutes her pursuer's breath was coming short and labored. Finally, he stopped:

"You little----!" He panted the epithet. "I'll get you yet!"

She glared at him across a pony's neck and ran out her tongue. Then, defiantly:

"I ain't scart of you!"

A drawling voice made them both turn quickly. "As an entirely impartial and unbiased spectator, friend, I should say that you are outcla.s.sed."

The man addressed himself to Mullendore. The stranger un.o.bserved had entered by the corral gate. He was a typical sheepherder in looks if not in speech, even to the collie that stood by his side. He wore a dusty, high-crowned black hat, overalls, mackinaw coat, with a small woolen scarf twisted about his neck, and in his hand he carried a gnarled staff. His eyes had a humorously cynical light lurking in their brown depths.

Mullendore did not reply, but with another oath began to untie the lash rope from the nearest pack.

"Wonder if I could get a drink of water?" The stranger turned to Kate as he spoke, lifting his hat to disclose a high white forehead--a forehead as fine as it was unexpected in a man trailing a bunch of sheep. The men who raised their hats to the women of the Sand Coulee were not numerous, and Kate's eyes widened perceptibly before she replied heartily, "Sure you can."