he demanded.

"Certainly not; aren't you two here?" Mona could be very pert when she tried. "Jack and I are holding down the ranch just now; the boys are all on roundup, of course. Jack went to town today to see some one.

"Um-m-yes, of course." It was Park, still trying to be polite and not commit himself on the subject of Jack. The "some one" whom Jack went oftenest to see was the bartender in the Palace saloon, but it was not necessary to tell her that.

"The river's coming up pretty fast, Mona," he ventured. "Don't yuh think yuh ought to pull out and go visiting?"

"No, I don't." Mona's tone was very decided. "I wouldn't drop down on a neighbor without warning just because the river happens to be coming up.

It has 'come up' every June since we've been living here, and there have been several of them. At the worst it never came inside the gate."

"You can never tell what it might do," Park argued. "Yuh know yourself there's never been so much snow in the mountains. This hot weather we've been having lately, and then the rain, will bring it a-whooping. Can't yuh ride over to the Jonses? One of us'll go with yuh."

"No, I can't." Mona's chin went up perversely. "I'm no coward, I hope, even if there was any danger which there isn't."

Thurston's chin went up also, and he sat a bit straighter. Whether she meant it or not, he took her words as a covert stab at himself. Probably she did not mean it; at any rate the blood flew consciously to her cheeks after she had spoken, and she caught her under lip sharply between her teeth. And that did not help matters or make her temper more yielding.

"Anyway," she added hurriedly, "Jack will be here; he's likely to come any minute now."

"Uh course, if Jack's got some new kind of half-hitch he can put on the river and hold it back yuh'll be all right," fleered Park, with the freedom of an old friend. He had known Mona when she wore dresses to her shoe-tops and her hair in long, brown curls down her back.

She wrinkled her nose at him also with the freedom of an old friend and Thurston stirred restlessly in his chair. He did not like even Park to be too familiar with Mona, though he knew there was a girl in Sh.e.l.lanne whose name Park sometimes spoke in his sleep.

She lifted the big gla.s.s lamp down from its place on the clock shelf and lighted it with fingers not quite steady. "You men," she remarked, "think women ought to be wrapped in pink cotton and put in a gla.s.s cabinet. If, by any miracle, the river should come up around the house, I flatter myself I should be able to cope with the situation. I'd just saddle my horse and ride out to high ground!"

"Would yuh?" Park grinned skeptically. "The road from here to the hill is half under water right now; the river's got over the bank above, and is flooding down through the horse pasture. By the time the water got up here the river'd be as wide and deep one side uh yuh as the other. Then where'd yuh be at?"

"It won't get up here, though," Mona a.s.serted coolly. "It never has."

"No, and the Lazy Eight never had to work the Yellowstone range on spring roundup before either," Park told her meaningly.

Whereupon Mona got upon her pedestal and smiled her unpleasant smile, against which even Park had no argument ready.

They lingered till long after all good cowpunchers are supposed to be in their beds--unless they are standing night-guard--but Jack failed to appear. The rain drummed upon the roof and the river swished and gurgled against the crumbling banks, and grumbled audibly to itself because the hills stood immovably in their places and set bounds which it could not pa.s.s, however much it might rage against their base.

When the clock struck a wheezy nine Mona glanced at it significantly and smothered a yawn more than half affected. It was a hint which no man with an atom of self-respect could overlook. With mutual understanding the two rose.

"I guess we'll have to be going," Park said with some ceremony. "I kept think ing maybe Jack would show up; it ain't right to leave yuh here alone like this."

"I don't see why not; I'm not the least bit afraid," Mona said. Her tone was impersonal and had in it a note of dismissal.

So, there being nothing else that they could do, they said good-night and took themselves off.

"This is sure fierce," Park grumbled when they struck the lower ground.

"Darn a man like Jack Stevens! He'll hang out there in town and bowl up on other men's money till plumb daylight. It's a wonder Mona didn't go with her mother. But no--it'd be awful if Jack had to cook his own grub for a week. Say, the water has come up a lot, don't yuh think, Bud?

If it raises much more Mona'll sure have a chance to 'cope with the situation. It'd just about serve her right, too."

Thurston did not think so, but he was in too dispirited a mood to argue the point. It had not been good for his peace of mind to sit and watch the color come and go in Mona's cheeks, and the laughter spring unheralded into her dear, big eyes, and the light tangle itself in the waves of her hair.

He guided his horse carefully through the deep places, and noted uneasily how much deeper it was than when they had crossed before. He cursed the conventions which forbade his staying and watching over the girl back there in the house which already stood upon an island, cut off from the safe, high land by a strip of backwater that was widening and deepening every minute, and, when it rose high enough to flow into the river below, would have a current that would make a nasty crossing.

On the first rise he stopped and looked back at the light which shone out from among the dripping cottonwoods. Even then he was tempted to go back and brave her anger that he might feel a.s.sured of her safety.

"Oh, come on," Park cried impatiently. "We can't do any good sitting out here in the rain. I don't suppose the water will get clear up to the house; it'll likely do things to the sheds and corrals, though, and serve Jack right. Come on, Bud. Mona won't have us around, so the sooner we get under cover the better for us. She's got lots uh nerve; I guess she'll make out all right."

There was common sense in the argument, and Thurston recognized it and rode on to camp. But instead of unsaddling, as he would naturally have done, he tied Sunfish to the bed-wagon and threw his slicker over his back to protect him from the rain. And though Park said nothing, he followed Thurston's example.

CHAPTER XIII. "I'll STAY--ALWAYS"

For a long time Thurston lay with wide-open eyes staring up at nothing, listening to the rain and thinking. By and by the rain ceased and he could tell by the dim whiteness of the tent roof that the clouds must have been swept away from before the moon, then just past the full.

He got up carefully so as not to disturb the others, and crept over two or three sleeping forms on his way to the opening, untied the flap and went out. The whole hilltop and the valley below were bathed in mellow radiance. He studied critically the wide sweep of the river. He might almost have thought it the Missouri itself, it stretched so far from bank to bank; indeed, it seemed to know no banks but the hills themselves. He turned toward where the light had shone among the cottonwoods below; there was nothing but a great blot of shade that told him nothing.

A step sounded just behind. A hand, the hand of Park, rested upon his shoulder. "Looks kinda dubious, don't it, kid? Was yuh thinking about riding down there?"

"Yes," Thurston answered simply. "Are you coming?"

"Sure," Park a.s.sented.

They got upon their horses and headed down the trail to the Stevens place. Thurston would have put Sunfish to a run, but Park checked him.

"Go easy," he admonished. "If there's swimming to be done and it's a cinch there will be, he's going to need all the wind he's got."

Down the hill they stopped at the edge of a raging torrent and strained their eyes to see what lay on the other side. While they looked, a light twinkled out from among the tree-tops. Thurston caught his breath sharply.

"She's upstairs," he said, and his voice sounded strained and unnatural.

"It's just a loft where they store stuff." He started to ride into the flood.

"Come on back here, yuh chump!" Park roared. "Get off and loosen the cinch before yuh go in there, or yuh won't get far. Sunfish'll need room to breathe, once he gets to bucking that current. He's a good water horse, just give him his head and don't get rattled and interfere with him. And we've got to go up a ways before we start in."

He led the way upstream, skirting under the bluff, and Thurston, chafing against the delay, followed obediently. Trees were racing down, their clean-washed roots reaching up in a tangle from the water, their branches waving like imploring arms. A black, tar-papered shack went scudding past, lodged upon a ridge where the water was shallower, and sat there swaying drunkenly. Upon it a great yellow cat clung and yowled his fear.

"That's old Dutch Henry's house," Park shouted above the roar. "I'll bet he's cussing things blue on some pinnacle up there." He laughed at the picture his imagination conjured, and rode out into the swirl.

Thurston kept close behind, mindful of Park's command to give Sunfish his head. Sunfish had carried him safely out of the stampede and he had no fear of him now.

His chief thought was a wish that he might do this thing quite alone.

He was jealous of Park's leading, and thought bitterly that Mona would thank Park alone and pa.s.s him by with scant praise and he did so want to vindicate himself. The next minute he was cursing his d.a.m.nable selfishness. A tree had swept down just before him, caught Park and his horse in its branches and hurried on as if ashamed of what it had done.

Thurston, in that instant, came near jerking Sunfish around to follow; but he checked the impulse as it was formed and left the reins alone which was wise. He could not have helped Park, and he could very easily have drowned himself. Though it was not thought of himself but of Mona that stayed his hand.

They landed at the gate. Sunfish scrambled with his feet for secure footing, found it and waded up to the front door. The water was a foot deep on the porch. Thurston beat an imperative tattoo upon the door with the b.u.t.t of his quirt, and shouted. And Mona's voice, shorn of its customary a.s.surance, answered faintly from the loft.

He shouted again, giving directions in a tone of authority which must have sounded strange to her, but which she did not seem to resent and obeyed without protest. She had to wade from the stairs to the door and when Thurston stooped and lifted her up in front of him, she looked as if she were very glad to have him there.

"You didn't 'cope with the situation,' after all," he remarked while she was settling herself firmly in the saddle.

"I went to sleep and didn't notice the water till it was coming in at the door," she explained. "And then--" She stopped abruptly.