“But, Dad, I always dreamed of a really grand horse,” went on Ina, which was telling the truth.
“Lass, I don’t recollect you bein’ keen over any kind of horses,” observed her father.
“We were very poor,” she said, softly. “You must recollect that I walked to school, winter and summer.”
“Haw! Haw! Yes, Ina, I sure do, an’ somehow it’s good to think of. . . . Wal, my daughter, we’re not poor now, an’ if you want the best hoss in all this country you’re only to say so.”
“Dad, I want California Red,” she rejoined, swiftly.
“What! That wild stallion?” ejaculated Blaine, in amaze. “Why, lass, all the hoss outfits in three States have swallowed the dust of that sorrel.”
“Oh, he must be grand!” exclaimed Ina, now thrilled about what had grown out of a joke.
“Miss Ina, he is indeed a grand horse,” interposed Setter. “I saw him once, two years ago. He’s a racy, fine, clean-limbed animal, red as fire, with a mane like a flame. An’ he’s not a killer of horses, as so many stallions are. Most of the riders an’ hunters think he’d break gentle. So you get your dad to promise. . . . I’m witness, Blaine, mind you, of your word.”
“California Red is yours, Ina, if he can be caught,” replied her father.
“He can be, I reckon,” said Setter, meditatively. “There’s only a few outfits after him. That is they claim to be wild-horse hunters, but it’s only a blind to hide their thieving of cattle and range horses. Hall an’ his outfit are workin’ close to Silver Meadow now. Probably the only hunters really chasin’ Red are this Ide boy an’ his pards. They’re leanin’ to crooked deals, too, but I reckon Ide wants Red so bad—”
“Ide!” interrupted Ina, quickly. “Do you mean Ben Ide?”
“Yes, his name’s Ben,” replied Setter.
“You lie! Ben Ide is no horse thief,” flashed Ina, hotly.
“See here, lass, easy, easy,” interposed her father. “You’ve been away from home a long time. Much has happened to others, as well as to your folks. Bad as well as good!”
Then he addressed Setter.
“You see, Less, it’s news to Ina. She an’ Ben went to school together. They used to play here as kids. An’ I reckon it’s a kind of a blow to learn—”
“Dad, I don’t believe it,” spoke up Ina, still with heat, her voice breaking.
“It’s too bad, Miss Ina,” said Setter. “I’m sorry I was the one to hurt your feelin’s. But it does appear your boy schoolmate has gone to the bad.”
Ina turned her back upon Setter, suddenly gripped by an unfamiliar fury and pain. Surprise at these feelings had a part in her agitation.
“Dad,” she said, striving to hide it, “has any—any dishonest thing ever been traced to Ben Ide?”
“Lass, there’s been a lot of talk,” replied her father. “Soon after you left home Ben took to the hills, crazy about wild hosses. Amos Ide, if you remember, was a religious man, an’ I reckon Ben represented to him somethin’ you do to me. Anyway, Amos couldn’t break the boy—make him settle down to work. They had a final quarrel. Ben’s been gone ever since. I’ve never seen him, though others have. Mrs. Ide takes it hard, they say. I drop in to see them now an’ then. But Ben’s name ain’t never mentioned. The last two years we’ve begun to run cattle out in the valleys an’ flat along Forlorn River. Ben lives over there. An’ a good many cattle an’ hosses have—wal, disappeared. So Ben had worse said about him. But I can’t say anythin’ has ever been proved.”
“It’s not easy to fix rustlin’ an’ hoss stealin’ on any one in an unsettled country,” cut in the cold voice of Setter, with its note of authority. “Stock missed by your father or other ranchers is never seen again. That means it goes over the line into Nevada or down across the high Sierras.”
“All the more reason a young man of good family—once a neighbor and—and friend of ours should not be accused of being a—”
As Ina halted over the unspeakable word Setter flicked the ashes from his cigar and then bent his inscrutable colorless eyes upon her.
“Any man is known by the company he keeps,” he asserted. “Young Ide lives with a renegade Modoc Indian, an’ a cowboy who was run out of Nevada for bein’ a horse thief.”
The pointed positiveness of the man struck Ina strangely even while his information made her heart sick. She stared at Setter until his cool assurance seemed slightly to change. Ina caught a glimpse of what hid behind that mask. She was fascinated by something impossible to grasp. Forced to listen to damning statements, she was unconsciously peering, with a woman’s strange inconsistency, at a man whose face and voice and look struck antagonism from her. There was no reason in the attitude of her mind.
“Dad, what Mr. Setter said does not strike me quite right,” she declared, frankly. “It makes me remember Ben Ide more than I thought I did. Dad, I don’t believe Ben would steal to save his life. How could any boy change so in a few years?”
Then she deliberately faced her father’s new partner.
“Mr. Setter, if I remember Ben Ide at all you will have to prove what you say. I shall certainly see him and tell him.”
“Ina, what’re you talkin’ about?” queried Blaine, impatiently. “That’s ’most an insult to Setter. An’ you can’t hunt up this Ide boy. I wouldn’t let you be seen talkin’ to him.”
“I should think you would take me to see Ben, so I—”
Ina saw the leap of red to her father’s craggy face and suddenly remembered his temper; she also saw several cowboys that had edged closer and now stood gaping.
“Girl, you’ve come back with queer ideas,” declared Blaine. “If that’s all school’s done for you I’m sorry I sent you.”
“Dad, I have a mind of my own—I can think,” replied Ina, feelingly.
“Wal, you needn’t do any thinkin’ about seein’ Ben Ide, an’ that’s all there is to that.”
“My dear father, I shall most certainly see Ben Ide,” said Ina.
“Go in the house,” ordered Blaine, harshly.
Ina strode away with her head high and face burning, and it was certain that she looked straight at the cowboys.
She heard Setter say: “Spunky girl, Hart, an’ you have your hands full.”
“Why’d you rub it in about young Ide?” demanded her father, angrily. “Seems you’re set on it, blowin’ at Hammell an’ all over—”
Ina passed out of hearing, and when she was also out of sight she slipped through the bars of a gate and went back to the grove. Here she found a seat under the double pine tree, and the act of returning there established a link between the past and
