unwelcome guest, stayed at the cabin on Piceance nearly two weeks. His wooing was surely one of the strangest known. He fleered at June, taunted her, rode over the girl’s pride and sense of decorum, beat down the defenses she set up, and filled her bosom with apprehension. It was impossible to score an advantage over his stolid strength and pachydermous insensibility.
The trapper sweated blood. He neither liked nor trusted his guest, but he was bound hand and foot. He must sit and watch the fellow moving to his end, see the gains he made day by day, and offer no effective protest. For Houck at a word could send him back to the penitentiary and leave June alone in a world to which her life had been alien.
Pete knew that the cowman was winning the campaign. His assumption that he was an accepted suitor of June began to find its basis of fact. The truth could be read in the child’s hunted eyes. She was still fighting, but the battle was a losing one.
Perhaps this was the best way out of a bad situation, Tolliver found himself thinking. In his rough way Houck was fond of June. A blind man could see that. Even though he was a wolf, there were moments when his eyes were tender for her. He would provide well for a wife. If his little Cinderella could bring herself to like the man, there was always a chance that love would follow. Jake always had the knack of fascinating women. He could be very attractive when he wished.
On a happy morning not long since June had sung of her wings. She was a meadow-lark swooping over the hills to freedom, her throat throbbing with songs of joy. Sometimes Pete, too, thought of her as a bird, but through many hours of anguished brooding he had come to know she was a fledgling with broken wings. The penalty for the father’s sins had fallen upon the child. All her life she must be hampered by the environment his wrongdoing had built up around them.
Since the beginning of the world masterful men have drawn to them the eyes and thoughts of women. June was no exception. Among the hours when she hated Houck were increasing moments during which a naïve wonder and admiration filled her mind. She was primitive, elemental. A little tingle of delight thrilled her to know that this strong man wanted her and would fight to win what his heart craved. After all he was her first lover. A queer shame distressed the girl at the memory of his kisses, for through all the anger, chagrin, and wounded pride had come to her the first direct realization of what sex meant. Her alarmed innocence pushed this from her.
Without scruple Houck used all the weapons at hand. There came a day when he skirted the edges of the secret.
“What do you mean?” she demanded. “What is it you claim to know about Dad all so big?”
He could see that June’s eyes were not so bold as the words. They winced from his even as she put the question.
“Ask him.”
“What’ll I ask? I wouldn’t believe anything you told me about him. He’s not like you. He’s good.”
“You don’t have to believe me. Ask him if he ever knew any one called Pete Purdy. Ask him who Jasper Stuart was. An’ where he lived whilst you was stayin’ with yore aunt at Rawlins.”
“I ain’t afraid to,” she retorted. “I’ll do it right now.”
Houck was sprawled on a bench in front of the cabin. He grinned impudently. His manner was an exasperating challenge. Evidently he did not believe she would.
June turned and walked to the stable. The heavy brogans weighted down the lightness of her step. The shapeless clothes concealed the grace of the slim figure. But even so there was a vital energy in the way she moved.
Tolliver was mending the broken teeth of a hay-rake and making a poor job of it.
June made a direct frontal attack. “Dad, did you ever know a man named Pete Purdy?”
The rancher’s lank, unshaven jaw fell. The blow had fallen at last. In a way he had expected it. Yet his mind was too stunned to find any road of escape.
“Why, yes—yes, I—yes, honey,” he faltered.
“Who was he?”
“Well, he was a—a cowpuncher, I reckon.”
“Who was Jasper Stuart, then?”
An explanation could no longer be dodged or avoided. Houck had talked too much. Tolliver knew he must make a clean breast of it, and that his own daughter would sit in judgment on him. Yet he hung back. The years of furtive silence still held him.
“He was a fellow lived in Brown’s Park.”
“What had you to do with him? Why did Jake Houck tell me to ask you about him?”
“Oh, I reckon—”
“And about where you lived while I was with Aunt Molly at Rawlins?” she rushed on.
The poor fellow moistened his dry lips. “I—I’ll tell you the whole story, honey. Mebbe I’d ought to ’a’ told you long ago. But someways—” He stopped, trying for a fresh start. “You’ll despise yore old daddy. You sure will. Well, you got a right to. I been a mighty bad father to you, June. Tha’s a fact.”
She waited, dread-filled eyes on his.
“Prob’ly I’d better start at the beginnin’, don’t you reckon? I never did have any people to brag about. Father and mother died while I was a li’l’ grasshopper. I was kinda farmed around, as you might say. Then I come West an’ got to punchin’ cows. Seems like, I got into a bad crowd. They was wild, an’ they rustled more or less. In them days there was a good many sleepers an’ mavericks on the range. I expect we used a running-iron right smart when we wasn’t sure whose calf it was.”
He was trying to put the best face on the story. June could see that, and her heart hardened toward him. She ignored the hungry appeal for mercy in his eyes.
“You mean you stole cattle. Is that it?” She was willing to hurt herself if she could give him pain. Had he not ruined her life?
“Well, I—I—Yes, I reckon that’s it. Our crowd picked up calves that belonged to the big outfits like the Diamond Slash. We drove ’em up to Brown’s Park, an’ later acrost the line to Wyoming or Utah.”
“Was Jake Houck one of your crowd?”
Pete hesitated.
She cut in, with a flare of childish ferocity. “I’m gonna know the truth. He’s not protecting you any.”
“Yes. Jake was one of us. I met up with him right soon after I come to Colorado.”
“And Purdy?”
“Tha’s the name I was passin’ under. I’d worked back in Missouri for a fellow of that name. They got to callin’ me Pete Purdy, so I kinda let it go. My father’s name was Tolliver, though. I took it—after the trouble.”
“What trouble?”
“It come after I was married. I met yore maw at Rawlins. She was workin’ at the railroad restaurant waitin’ on table. For a coupla years we lived there, an’ I wish to God we’d never left. But Jake persuaded ’Lindy I’d ought to take up land, so we moved back to the Park an’ I preëmpted. Everything was
