The Gold Girl.

by James B. Hendryx.

CHAPTER I

A HORSEMAN OF THE HILLS

Patty Sinclair reined in her horse at the top of a low divide and gazed helplessly around her. The trail that had grown fainter and fainter with its ascent of the creek bed disappeared entirely at the slope of loose rock and bunch gra.s.s that slanted steeply to the divide. In vain she scanned the deeply gored valley that lay before her and the timbered slopes of the mountains for sign of human habitation. Her horse lowered his head and snipped at the bunch gra.s.s.

Stiffly the girl dismounted. She had been in the saddle since early noon with only two short intervals of rest when she had stopped to drink and to bathe her fare in the deliciously cold waters of mountain streams--and now the trail had melted into the hills, and the broad shadows of mountains were lengthening. Every muscle of her body ached at the unaccustomed strain, and she was very hungry. She envied her horse his enjoyment of the bunch gra.s.s which he munched with much tongueing of the bit and impatient shaking of the head. With bridle reins gripped tightly she leaned wearily against the saddle.

"I'm lost," she murmured. "Just plain _lost_. Surely I must have come fifty miles, and I followed their directions exactly, and now I'm tired, and stiff, and sore, and hungry, and lost." A grim little smile tightened the corners of her mouth. "But I'm glad I came. If Aunt Rebecca could see me now! Wouldn't she just gloat? 'I told you so, my dear, just as I often told your poor father, to have nothing whatever to do with that horrible country of wild Indians, and ferocious beasts, and desperate characters.'" Hot tears blurred her eyes at the thought of her father. "This is the country he loved, with its mountains and its woods and its deep mysterious valleys--and I want to love it, too. And I _will_ love it! I'll find his mine if it takes me all the rest of my life. And I'll show the people back home that he was right, that he did know that the gold was here, and that he wasn't just a visionary and a ne'er-do-well!"

A rattle of loose stones set her heart thumping wildly and caused her to peer down the back trail where a horseman was slowly ascending the slope. The man sat loosely in his saddle with the easy grace of the slack rein rider. A roll-brim Stetson with its crown boxed into a peak was pushed slightly back upon his head, and his legs were encased to the thighs in battered leather chaps whose lacings were studded with silver _chonchas_ as large as trade dollars. A coiled rope hung from a strap upon the right side of his saddle, while a leather-covered jug was swung upon the opposite side by a thong looped over the horn. All this the girl took in at a glance as the rangy buckskin picked his way easily up the slope. She noted, also, the white b.u.t.t-plates of the revolver that protruded from its leather holster. Her first impulse was to mount and fly, but the futility of the attempt was apparent. If the man followed she could hardly hope to elude him upon a horse that was far from fresh, and even if she did it would be only to plunge deeper into the hills--become more hopelessly lost. Aunt Rebecca's words "desperate character" seemed suddenly to a.s.sume significance.

The man was very close now. She could distinctly hear the breathing of his horse, and the soft rattle of bit-chains. Despite her defiant declaration that she was glad she had come, she knew that deep down in her heart, she fervidly wished herself elsewhere. "Maybe he's a ranchman," she thought, "but why should any honest man be threading unfrequented hill trails armed with a revolver and a brown leather jug?" No answer suggested itself, and summoning her haughtiest, coldest look, she met the glance of the man who drew rein beside her.

His features were clean-cut, bronzed, and lean--with the sinewy leanness of health. His gray flannel shirt rolled open at the throat, about which was loosely drawn a silk scarf of robin's-egg blue, held in place by the tip of a buffalo horn polished to an onyx l.u.s.ter. The hand holding the bridle reins rested carelessly upon the horn of his saddle. With the other he raised the Stetson from his head.

"Good evenin', Miss," he greeted, pleasantly. "Lost?"

"No," she lied brazenly, "I came here on purpose--I--I like it here."

She felt the lameness of the lie and her cheeks flushed. But the man showed no surprise at the statement, neither did he smile. Instead, he raised his head and gravely inspected the endless succession of mountains and valleys and timbered ridges.

"It's a right nice place," he agreed. To her surprise the girl could find no hint of sarcasm in the words, nor was there anything to indicate the "desperate character" in the way he leaned forward to stroke his horse's mane, and remove a wisp of hair from beneath the headstall. It was hard to maintain her air of cold reserve with this soft-voiced, grave-eyed young stranger. She wondered whether a "desperate character" could love his horse, and felt a wild desire to tell him of her plight. But as her eyes rested upon the brown leather jug she frowned.

The man shifted himself in the saddle. "Well, I must be goin'," he said. "Good evenin'."

Patty bowed ever so slightly, as he replaced the Stetson upon his head and touched his horse lightly with a spur. "Come along, you Buck, you!"

As the horse started down the steep descent on the other side of the divide a feeling of loneliness that was very akin to terror gripped the girl. The sunlight showed only upon the higher levels, and the prospect of spending the night alone in the hills without food or shelter produced a sudden chilling sensation in the pit of her stomach.

"Oh! Please----"

The buckskin turned in his tracks, and once more the man was beside her upon the ridge.

"I _am_ lost," she faltered. "Only, I hated to admit it."

"Folks always do. I've be'n lost a hundred times, an' I never _would_ admit it."

"I started for the Watts's ranch. Do you know where it is?"

"Yes, it's over on Monte's Creek."

Patty smiled. "I could have told _you_ that. The trouble is, someone seems to have removed all the signs."

"They ought to put 'em up again," opined the stranger in the same grave tone with which he had bid her good evening.

"They told me in town that I was to take the left hand trail where it forked at the first creek beyond the canyon."

The man nodded. "Yes, that about fits the case."

"But I did take the trail that turned to the left up the first creek beyond the canyon, and I haven't seen the slightest intimation of a ranch."

"No, you see, this little creek don't count, because most of the time it's dry; an' this ain't a regular trail. It's an' old winter road that was used to haul out cord wood an' timber. Monte's Creek is two miles farther on. It's a heap bigger creek than this, an' the trail's better, too. Watts's is about three mile up from the fork. You can't miss it. It's the only ranch there."

"How far is it back to the trail?" asked the girl wearily.

"About two mile. It's about seven mile to Watts's that way around.

There's a short cut, through the hills, but I couldn't tell you so you'd find it. There's no trail, an' it's up one coulee an' down another till you get there. I'm goin' through that way; if you'd like to come along you're welcome to."

For a moment Patty hesitated but her eyes returned to the jug and she declined, a trifle stiffly. "No, thank you. I--I think I will go around by the trail."

Either the man did not notice the curtness of the reply, or he chose to ignore it, for the next instant, noting the gasp of pain and the sudden tightening of the lips that accompanied her attempt to raise her foot to the stirrup, he swung lightly to the ground, and before she divined what he was about, had lifted her gently into the saddle and pressed the reins into her hand. Without a word he returned to his horse, and with face flushed scarlet, the girl glared at the powerful gray shoulders as he picked up his reins from the ground. The next moment she headed her own horse down the back trail and rode into the deepening shadows. Gaining the main trail she urged her horse into a run.

"He--he's awfully strong," she panted, "and just _horrid!_"

From the top of the divide the man watched until she disappeared, then he stroked softly the velvet nose that nuzzled against his cheek.

"What d'you reckon, Buck? Are they goin' to start a school for that litter of young Wattses? There ain't another kid within twenty mile--must be." As he swung into the saddle the leather covered jug b.u.mped lightly against his knee. There was a merry twinkle of laughter in his blue eyes as, with lips solemn as an exhorter's, he addressed the offending object. "You brown rascal, you! If it hadn't be'n for you, me an' Buck might of made a hit with the lady, mightn't we, Buck?

Scratch gravel, now you old reprobate, or we won't get to camp till midnight."

"Anyway, she ain't no kin to the Wattses," he added reflectively, "not an' that clean, she ain't."

CHAPTER II

AT THE WATTS RANCH

It was with a decided feeling of depression that Patty Sinclair approached the Watts ranch. Long before she reached the buildings an air of shiftless dilapidation was manifest in the ill-lined barbed wire fences whose rotting posts sagged drunkenly upon loosely strung wire. A dry weed-choked irrigation ditch paralleled the trail, its wooden flumes, like the fence posts, rotting where they stood, and its walls all but obliterated by the wash of spring freshets. The depression increased as she pa.s.sed close beside the ramshackle log stable, where her horse sank to his ankles in a filthy brown seepage of mud and rotting straw before the door. Two small, slouchily built stacks of weather-stained hay occupied a fenced-off enclosure, beside which, with no attempt to protect them from the weather, stood a dish-wheeled hay rake, and a rusty mowing machine, its cutter-bar buried in weeds.

Pa.s.sing through a small clump of cottonwoods, in which three or four raw-boned horses had taken refuge from the mosquitoes, she came suddenly upon the ranch house, a squat, dirt-roofed cabin of unpeeled logs. So, _this_ was the Watts ranch! Again and again in the delirium that preceded her father's death, he had muttered of Monte's Creek and the Watts ranch, until she had come to think of it as a place of cool halls and broad verandahs situated at the head of some wide mountain valley in which sleek cattle grazed belly-deep in lush gra.s.ses.

A rabble of nondescript curs came snapping and yapping about her horse's legs until dispersed by a harsh command from the dark interior of the cabin.

"Yere, yo' git out o' thet!"

The dogs slunk away and their places were immediately taken by a half-dozen ill-kempt, bedraggled children. A tousled head was thrust from the doorway, and after a moment of inspection a man stepped out upon the hard-trodden earth of the dooryard. He was bootless and a great toe protruded from a hole in the point of his sock. He wore a faded hickory shirt, and the knees of his bleached-out overalls were patched with blue gingham.

"Howdy," he greeted, in a not unkindly tone, and paused awkwardly while the protruding toe tried vainly to burrow from sight in the hard earth.

"Is--is this the Watts ranch?" The girl suppressed a wild desire to burst into tears.

"Yes, mom, this is. .h.i.t--what they is of hit." His fingers picked vaguely at his scraggly beard. An idea seemed suddenly to strike him, and turning, he thrust his head in at the door. "Ma!" he called, loudly, and again "Ma! _Ma!_"

The opening of a door within was followed by the sound of a harsh voice. "Lawzie me, John Watts, what's ailin' yo' now--got a burr in under yo' gallus?" A tall woman with a broad, kindly face pushed past the man, wiping suds upon her ap.r.o.n from a pair of very large and very red hands.