Laramie Holds the Range | Page 3

over from the ford--it's only a matter o' two or three miles."
"Are there any other passengers?" asked Kate doubtfully.
"Belle Shockley for the Reservation," answered McAlpin, promptly, "if--she ain't changed her mind, it bein' so late."
Sawdy put a brusque end to this uncertainty: "She's down there at the Mountain House waitin'--seen her myself not ten minutes ago."
Scurrying away, McAlpin came back in a jiffy with the driver, Bradley. Thin, bent and grizzled though he was, Kate thought she saw under the broad but shabby hat and behind the curtain of scraggly beard and deep wrinkles dependable eyes and felt reassured.
"How far is it to the ranch?" she asked of the queer-looking Bradley.
"Long ways, the way you go, ain't it, Bill?" McAlpin turned to the old driver for confirmation.
"'Bout fourteen mile," answered Bradley, "to the ford."
"What time should I get there?" asked Kate again.
Bradley stood pat.
"What time'll she get there, Bill?" demanded Lefever.
"Twelve o'clock," hazarded Bradley tersely. "Or," he added, "I'll stop when I pass the ranch 'n' tell 'em to send a rig down in the mornin'."
"That would take you out of your way," Kate objected.
"Not a great ways."
A man that would go to this trouble in the middle of the night for someone he had never seen before, Kate deemed safe to trust. "No," she said, "I'll go with you, if I may."
The way in which she spoke, the sweetness and simplicity of her words, moved Sawdy and Lefever, the first a widower and the second a bachelor, and even stirred McAlpin, a married man. But they had no particular effect on Bradley. The blandishments of young womanhood were past his time of day.
With Lefever carrying the suitcase and nearly everybody talking at once, the party walked around to the rear door of the baggage-room.
The stage had been backed up, a hostler in the driver's seat, and the mail and express were being loaded. Sawdy volunteered to save time by fetching Belle Shockley from the hotel, and while McAlpin and Lefever inspected and discussed the horses--for the condition of which McAlpin, as foreman of Kitchen's barn, was responsible--Kate stood, listener and onlooker. Everything was new and interesting. Four horses champed impatiently under the arc-light swinging in the street, and looked quite fit. But the stage itself was a shock to her idea of a Western stage. Instead of the old-fashioned swinging coach body, such as she had wondered at in circus spectacles, she saw a very substantial, shabby-looking democrat wagon with a top, and with side curtains. The curtains were rolled up. But the oddest thing to Kate was that wherever a particle could lodge, the whole stage was covered with a ghostly, grayish-white dust. While the loading went on, Sawdy arrived with the second passenger, Belle Shockley. She had, fortunately for Kate's apprehensions, not changed her mind.
Belle herself was something of an added shock. She wore a long rubber coat, in which the rubber was not in the least disguised. Her hair was frizzed about her face, and a small, brimless hat perched high, almost startled, on her head. She was tall and angular, her features were large and her eyes questioning. Had she had Bradley's beard, she would have passed with Kate for the stage driver. She was formidable, but yet a woman; and she scrutinized the slender whip of a girl before her with feminine suspicion. Nor did she give Kate a chance to break the ice of acquaintance before starting.
Under Lefever's chaperonage and with his gallant help, Kate took her seat where directed, just behind the driver, and her new companion presently got up beside her.
The mail bags disposed of, Bradley climbed into place, gathered his lines, the hostler let go the leads and the stage was off. The horses, restive after their long wait, dashed down the main street of the town, whirling Kate, all eyes and ears, past the glaring saloons and darkened stores to the extreme west end of Sleepy Cat. There, striking northward, the stage headed smartly for the divide.
The night was clear, with the stars burning in the sky. From the rigid silence of the driver and his two passengers, it might have been thought that no one of them ever spoke. To Kate, who as an Eastern girl had never, it might be said, breathed pure air, the clear, high atmosphere of the mountain night was like sparkling wine. Her senses tingled with the strange stimulant.
To Belle, there was no novelty in any of this, and the strain of silence was correspondingly greater. It was she who gave in first:
"You from Medicine Bend?" she asked, as the four horses walked up a long hill.
"Pittsburgh," answered Kate.
"Pittsburgh!" echoed Belle, startled. "Gee! some trip you've had."
Belle, encouraged, then confessed that a cyclone had given her her own first start West. She had