And that horse—going down the road dragging——
"You'd better get some one to double for me in this scene," she said irrelevantly. "I—I don't know this horse, and if he starts running the boys might not catch him in time. It isn't safe, is it?"
"It's safe," said Lone pityingly. "You won't be dragged. You just get on and ride. I'll lead him. John Doe's gentle as a dog."
"Just straight riding?" Lorraine considered the matter gravely. "Wel-ll—but I saw a man dragged, once. He'd been shot first. It—it was awful!"
"I'll bet it was. How'd you come to be walking so far?"
Lorraine looked at him suspiciously. Lone thought her eyes were the most wonderful eyes—and the most terrible—that he had ever seen. Almond-shaped they were, the irises a clear, dark gray, the eyeballs blue-white like a healthy baby's. That was the wonder of them. But their glassy shine made them terrible. Her lids lifted in a sudden stare.
"You're not the man, are you? I—I think he was taller than you. And his hat was brown. He's a brute—a beast! To shoot a man just riding along—— It rained," she added plaintively. "My bag is back there somewhere under a bush. I think I could find the bush—it was where a rabbit was sitting—but he's probably gone by this time. A rabbit," she told him impressively, "wouldn't sit out in the rain all night, would he? He'd get wet. And a rabbit would feel horrid when he was wet—such thick fur he never would get dried out. Where do they go when it rains? They have holes in the ground, don't they?"
"Yes. Sure, they do. I'll show you one, down the road here a little piece. Come on—it ain't far."
To see a rabbit hole in the ground, Lorraine consented to mount and ride while Lone walked beside her, agreeing with everything she said that needed agreement. When she had gone a few rods, however, she began to call him Charlie and to criticize the direction of the picture. They should not, she declared, mix murders and thunderstorms in the same scene. While the storm effect was perfectly wonderful, she thought it rather detracted from the killing. She did not believe in lumping big stuff together like that. Why not have the killing done by moonlight, and use the storm when the murderer was getting away, or something like that? And as for taking them out on location and making all those storm scenes without telling them in advance so that they could have dry clothes afterwards, she thought it a perfect outrage! If it were not for spoiling the picture, she would quit, she asserted indignantly. She thought the director had better go back to driving a laundry wagon, which was probably where he came from.
Lone agreed with her, even though he did not know what she was talking about. He walked as fast as he could, but even so he could not travel the six miles to the ranch very quickly. He could see that the girl was burning up with fever, and he could hear her voice growing husky—could hear, too, the painful laboring of her breath. When she was not mumbling incoherent nonsense she was laughing hoarsely at the plight she was in, and after that she would hold both hands to her chest and moan in a way that made Lone grind his teeth.
When he lifted her off his horse at the foreman's cottage she was whispering things no one could understand. Three cowpunchers came running and hindered him a good deal in carrying her into the house, and the foreman's wife ran excitedly from one room to the other, asking questions and demanding that some one do something "for pity's sake, she may be dying for all you know, while you stand there gawping like fool-hens."
"She was out all night in the rain—got lost, somehow. She said she was coming here, so I brought her on. She's down with a cold, Mrs. Hawkins. Better take off them wet clothes and put hot blankets around her. And a poultice or something on her chest, I reckon." Lone turned to the door, stopped to roll a cigarette, and watched Mrs. Hawkins hurrying to Lorraine with a whisky toddy the cook had mixed for her.
"A sweat's awful good for a cold like she's got," he volunteered practically. "She's out of her head—or she was when I found her. But I reckon that's mostly scare, from being lost all night. Give her a good sweat, why don't you?" He reached the doorstep and then turned back to add, "She left a grip back somewhere along the road. I'll go hunt it up, I reckon."
He mounted John Doe and rode down to the corral, where two or three riders were killing time on various pretexts while they waited for details of Lone's adventure. Delirious young women of the silk-stocking class did not arrive at the Sawtooth every morning, and it was rumored already amongst the men that she was some looker, which naturally whetted their interest in her.
"I'll bet it's one of Bob's girls, come trailin' him up. Mebby another of them heart-ballum cases of Bob's," hazarded Pop Bridgers, who read nothing unless it was printed on pink paper, and who refused to believe that any good could come out of a city. "Ain't that right, Loney? Hain't she a heart-ballum girl of Bob's?"
From the saddle Lone stared down impassively at Pop and Pop's companions. "I don't know a thing about her," he stated emphatically. "She said she was coming to the ranch, and she was scared of the thunder and lightning. That's every word of sense I could get outa her. She ain't altogether ignorant—she knows how to climb on a horse, anyway, and she kicked about having to ride sideways on account of her skirts. She was plumb out of her head, and talked wild, but she handled her reins like a rider. And she never mentioned Bob, nor anybody else excepting some fellow she called Charlie. She thought I was him, but she only talked to me friendly. She didn't pull any love talk at all."
"Charlie?" Pop ruminated over a fresh quid of tobacco. "Charlie! Mebby Bob, he stakes himself to a different name now and then. There ain't any Charlie, except Charlie Werner; she wouldn't mean him, do yuh s'pose?"
"Charlie Werner? Hunh! Say, Pop, she ain't no squaw—is she, Loney?" Sid Sterling remonstrated.
"If I can read brands," Lone testified, "she's no girl of Bob's. She's a good, honest girl when she ain't crazy."
"And no good, honest girl who is not crazy could possibly be a girl of mine! Is that the idea, Lone?"
Lone turned unhurriedly and looked at young Bob Warfield standing in the stable door with his hands in his trousers pockets and his pipe in his mouth.
"That ain't the argument. Pop, here, was wondering if she was another heart-ballum girl of yours," Lone grinned unabashed. "I don't know such a hell of a lot about heart-balm ladies, Bob. I ain't a millionaire. I'm just making a guess at their brand—and it ain't the brand this little lady carries."
Bob removed one hand from his pocket and cuddled the bowl of his pipe. "If she's a woman, she's a heart-balmer if she gets the chance. They all are, down deep in their tricky hearts. There isn't a woman on earth that won't sell a man's soul out of his body if she happens to think it's worth her while—and she can get away with it. But don't for any sake call her my heart-balmer."
"That was Pop," drawled Lone. "It don't strike me as being any subject for you fellows to make remarks about, anyway," he advised Pop firmly. "She's a right nice little girl, and she's pretty darn sick." He touched John Doe with the spurs and rode away, stopping at the foreman's gate to finish his business with Hawkins. He was a conscientious young man, and since he had charge of Elk Spring camp, he set its interests above his own, which was more than some of the Sawtooth men would have done in his place.
Having reported the damage to the bridge and made his suggestions about the repairs, he touched up John Doe again and loped away on a purely personal matter, which had to do with finding the bag which the girl had told him was under a bush where a rabbit had been sitting.
If she had not been so very sick, Lone would have laughed at her naïve method of identifying the spot. But he was too sorry for her to be amused at the vagaries
