through mist because of the sunset light in the crotch of the range.
“I reckon Mr. Tolliver won’t let this Houck bully you none,” the boy said.
“I ain’t scared of him,” she answered.
But June knew there would be small comfort for her in the thought of her father’s protection. She divined intuitively that he would be a liability rather than an asset in any conflict that might arise between her and Jake Houck.
“If there was anything I could do—but o’ course there ain’t.”
“No,” she agreed. “Oh, well, I’m not worryin’. I’ll show him when he comes back. I’m as big as he is behind a gun.”
Bob looked at her, startled. He saw she was whistling to keep up her courage. “Are you sure enough afraid of him?”
Her eyes met his. She nodded. “He said he was coming back to marry me—good as said I could like it or lump it, he didn’t care which.”
“Sho! Tha’s jus’ talk. No girl has to marry a man if she don’t want to. You don’t need any gun-play. He can’t make his brags good if you won’t have him. It’s a free country.”
“If he told you to do something—this Jake Houck—you wouldn’t think it was so free,” the girl retorted without any life in her voice.
He jumped up, laughing. “Well, I don’t expect he’s liable to tell me to do anything. He ain’t ever met up with me. I gotta go peel the spuds for supper. Don’t you worry, June. He’s bluffin’.”
“I reckon,” she said, and nodded a careless good-bye.
CHAPTER IV
CLIPPED WINGS
The Cinderella of Piceance Creek was scrupulously clean even though ragged and unkempt. Every Saturday night she shooed Pete Tolliver out of the house and took a bath in the tub which usually hung suspended from a wooden peg driven into the outer wall of the log cabin. Regularly as Monday came wash day.
On a windy autumn day, with the golden flames of fall burning the foliage of the hill woods, June built a fire of cottonwood branches near the brook and plunged with fierce energy into the week’s washing. She was a strong, lithe young thing and worked rapidly. Her methods might not be the latest or the best, but they won results. Before the sun had climbed halfway to its zenith she had the clothes on the line.
Since she had good soapy suds and plenty of hot water left in the iron kettle, June decided to scrub the bed covers. Twenty minutes later, barefooted and barelegged, her skirts tucked up above the knees, the young washwoman was trampling blankets in the tub. She had no reason to suppose that anybody was within a mile of her. Wherefore, since the world was beautiful and mere life a joy, she improvised a child’s song of thanksgiving.
It was a foolish little thing without rhyme or reason. It began nowhere and finished at the same place. But it lifted straight from the heart and perhaps it traveled as far heavenward as most prayers. She danced among the suds as she sang it, brown arms, bare to the elbows, stretched to the sunlit hills.
| Wings—wings—wings! I can fly, ’way ’way ’way off, Over the creek, over the piñons. Goodness, yes! Like a meadow-lark. Over the hills, clear to Denver, Where the trains are. And it’s lovely—lovely—lovely. |
It was an unschooled, impulsive cry of the heart to the great soul of life and beauty that lies back of nature. No human eyes or ears were meant to see or hear the outburst. A shy girl’s first day-dreams of her lover ought no more to be dragged out to the public gaze than this.
Through the quaking asps by the creek narrowed eyes gloated. Out of the thicket Jake Houck strode with a ribald laugh.
“Right pretty, my dear, but don’t you spread them wings an’ leave yore man alone.”
The dancing spirit fled her flying feet. She was no longer a daughter of the skies, attuned to sunshine and laughter and the golden harmony of the hills. Joy and life were stricken out of her.
He had heard. He had seen. A poignant shame enveloped and scorched the girl’s body. She was a wild thing who lived within herself. It was easy to put her in the wrong. She felt the mortification of one who has been caught in some indecent exhibition.
The humiliation was at first for the song and dance. Not till another moment did she think of the bare legs rising out of the soapsuds. His smouldering gaze brought them to mind.
Instantly she leaped from the tub, shook down the skirts, snatched up shoes and stockings, and fled barefooted to the house. A brogan dropped a few steps from the start. She stopped, as though to pick it up. But Houck was following. The girl turned and ran like a deer.
Houck retrieved the brogan and followed slowly. He smiled. His close-set eyes were gleaming. This was an adventure just to his taste.
The door of the cabin was bolted. He knocked.
“Here’s yore shoe, sweetheart,” he called.
No answer came. He tried the back door. It, too, had the bolt driven home.
“All right. If it ain’t yore shoe I’ll take it along with me. So long.”
He walked away and waited in the bushes. His expectation was that this might draw her from cover. It did not.
Half an hour later Tolliver rode across the mesa. He found Houck waiting for him at the entrance to the corral. Pete nodded a rather surly greeting. He could not afford to quarrel with the man, but he was one of the last persons in the world he wanted to see.
“ ’Lo, Jake,” he said. “Back again, eh?”
“Yep. Finished my business. I got to have a talk with you, Pete.”
Tolliver slid a troubled gaze at him. What did Jake want? Was it money—hush money? The trapper did not have fifty dollars to his name, nor for that matter twenty.
“ ’S all right, Jake. If there’s anything I can do for you—why, all you got to do’s to let me know,” he said uneasily.
Houck laughed, derisively. “Sure. I know how fond you are of me, Pete. You’re plumb glad to see me again, ain’t you? Jes’ a-honin’ to talk over old times, I’ll bet.”
“I’d as lief forget them days, Jake,” Tolliver confessed. “I done turned over another chapter, as you might say. No need rakin’ them up, looks like.”
The big man’s grin mocked him. “Tha’s up to you, Pete. Me, I aim to be reasonable. I ain’t throwin’ off on my friends. All I want’s to make sure they are my friends. Pete, I’ve took a fancy to yore June. I reckon
