Laramie Holds the Range | Page 7

"Wha'd' y' mean?" he countered, gathering up his lines.
"What man was it, you were talking to?" she demanded.
"I guess if I was talkin' to any man," he grumbled, "I was talkin' in my
sleep. You must 'a' been 'a' dreamin'."
"Oh, come now, 'fess up, Bill." Belle nodded toward Kate. "She was
awake."
Bradley started the horses, shifted on the box and looked not too well
pleased: "I wasn't talkin' to nobody last night----"
"Bill, what a whopper."
"If you mean this mornin'----" he went on, doggedly.
"Well--who was here?"
"Jim Laramie."
"Jim Laramie!" echoed Belle, catching her breath and poking Kate with
her elbow. "Wonder he didn't hold us up."
Bradley scowled but said nothing.
"Bradley doesn't like that," murmured Belle to Kate, as soon as the
creaking of the wheels gave her a chance to speak without his hearing.
"He's a friend of Jim's."
"Where did he come from?" continued Belle, raising her voice toward
Bradley.
Bradley took his time to answer: "Claimed he was goin' home," he said
laconically.
"How could he get across the creek with the bridges out?" persisted

Belle.
Bradley's eyes were on his horses. He was weary of question: "High
water wouldn't bother him much."
"Well, I want to know! I should think it would bother anybody the way
it was sweeping down last night."
"Hell!" ejaculated Bradley, parting with his manners and his patience
together: "Jim could swim the Crazy Woman with his horse's feet tied."
"Who is 'Jim'?" Kate demanded of her companion in an undertone.
"Jim Laramie? He lives in the Falling Wall."
CHAPTER III
DOUBLEDAY'S
When they got back to the ford it was daylight and the Crazy Woman
was hurrying on as peacefully as if a frown had never ruffled its repose.
Gnarled trees springing out of gashes along its tortuous channel showed,
in the debris lodged against their flood-bared roots and mud-swept
branches, the fury of the night, and the creek banks, scoured by many
floods, revealed new and savage gaps in the morning sun; but Bradley
made his crossing with the stage almost as uneventfully as if a
cloud-burst had never ruffled the mountains.
Kate was eager to meet her father, eager to see what might be her new
home. The moment the horses got up out of the bottom, Bradley
pointed with his whip to the ranch-house. Kate saw ahead of her a long,
one-story log house crowning, with its group of out-buildings, a level
bench that stretched toward the foothills. The landscape was bare of
trees and, to Kate, brown and barren-looking, save for a patch of green
near the creek where an alfalfa field lay vividly pretty in the sun. The
ranch-house, built of substantial logs, was ample in its proportions and
not uninviting, even to her Eastern eyes.

Bradley, with a flourish, swept past the stable, around the corral and
drew up before the door with a clatter. In front of the bunk-house on the
right, a cowboy rolling a cigarette, was watching the arrival, and just as
Bradley plumped Kate, on his arms, to the ground, her father, Barb
Doubleday himself, opened the ranch-house door.
Kate had never seen her father. And until Bradley spoke, she had not
the slightest idea that this could be he. She saw only a rough-looking
man of great stature, slightly stooped, and with large features burnt to a
deep brown.
"Hello, Barb," said Bradley, without much enthusiasm.
His salutation met with as little: "What's up?" demanded Doubleday.
Kate noticed the huskiness in the strong, cold tone.
"Brought y' a passenger."
From the talk of the night she recognized her father's nickname. It was
a little shock to realize that this must, indeed, be he. And the unmoved
expression of his face as he surveyed her without a smite or greeting,
was not reassuring.
But she hastened forward: "Father?" there was a note of girlish appeal
in her greeting: "I'm Kate--your daughter. You don't remember me, of
course," she added with an effort to extort a welcome. "You got my
letter, did you?"
He looked at her uncertainly for a moment and nodded slowly. "Was it
all right," she asked, now almost panic-stricken, "to come to see you?"
Confused or preoccupied, he stumbled out some words of welcome,
spoke to Belle on the stage, took the suitcase out of Bradley's hand and
led Kate into the house. In the large room that she entered stood a long
table and a big fireplace opened at the back. On the left, two bedrooms
opened off the big room, and on the right, the kitchen.
The chill of the strange greeting embarrassed Kate the more because

she felt Belle could hardly fail to notice it, and her own resentment of it
did not easily wear off. But hoping for better