folks, I’ll mosey back to my cabin,” said Tanner. “I’m pretty tired an’ now thet I’ve had my little party I’ll say good night.”
“You goin’ an’ we haven’t thanked you?” queried Ames, aghast at a fact that seemed irremedial.
“Rich, I’m thanked enough,” laughed Tanner. “It’s something to knock the pins out of you Arizona twins. I’ve been layin’ to do it.”
“Ahuh, I see. . . . All right, Cap. What I’ll do aboot it I can’t say now.”
Tanner bade his friends good night and went out. He thought Nesta might be waiting to waylay him outside, but she was not. No doubt she had been struck even deeper than Rich. How strange that she had burst out crying! She seemed quite beyond his understanding, but this did not mitigate his gladness at having given her things her heart desired. Nesta’s lot had not been an easy one, nor had that of any of the Ameses, though for Rich no life could anywhere have been preferable to this wild Tonto. Their father came of fine Southern stock, probably Texan, and once he had been better off. Tanner had always inclined to the conviction that Ames had been involved in some feud in the South and had left to escape it. But he had only prolonged fatality. Though he had not been an active participant in the notorious Pleasant Valley war, he had been a victim to it. The Tonto had linked the name of Tate with the murder of Ames, but like many another of the legends of this wild lonely basin, it had never been verified.
The old trapper wended a thoughtful way along the trail under the bold black slope. The night was now cold. A keen wind made him draw his coat tight. The stars shone white out of a dark-blue sky; the creek ran with low murmur under the rocky banks; a pack of wolves were running prey over the top of Dead Horse Hill.
He had brought happiness to the Ameses and thereby to himself. But was all well with them? One of the things about the Ameses that had so appealed to Tanner was their devotion to one another. Could the loss of little Tommy and the advent of suitors for Nesta account for something the old trapper sensed yet could not define?
The trail through the break in the cliff lay in deep darkness, and Tanner, after half a year’s absence, had to go slowly over the boulders. He gained the valley presently and soon reached his cabin, and without making a light he went to bed.
Then he did not at once fall asleep, as was usual with him. The branches of spruce and maple that overgrew the cabin brushed against the roof and the leaves rustled. The wind under the eaves had a wailing note. It brought to Tanner more than the meaning of November.
* * * *
He awoke late for him, and when he went out to the spring with his pail the gray frost on the grass sparkled in the clear light, and far above, on the west rim of the valley, the fringed line of pine burned gold in the sun. A thin film of ice covered the still pool below where the spring gushed out. He saw fresh deer tracks. While he was retracing his steps to the cabin he heard faint but sharp rifle-shots from the flat below. Rich Ames was out testing the new Winchester. He expected Rich to come stalking along any moment now, but he had cooked and eaten his breakfast, had cleared his utensils away, and was unpacking supplies when a familiar soft footfall thrilled him.
Rich entered the cabin, seeming to fill it with a potential force. He radiated youth, vitality, and that flashing fire characteristic of the Ameses, but this morning he was not gay.
“Howdy, Cap! Look at that,” he said, holding up his old sombrero.
Tanner espied three bullet holes through the crown of it. “Pretty good, if you wasn’t close.”
“Cap, I was close—fifty feet or so.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Tanner, and laying the hat on the table he flattened the crown, and put a silver dollar over the three holes. It hid them.
“If thet’d been at a hundred steps, I’d say tip-top.”
“Cap, I couldn’t hit a barn door with the rifle,” replied Rich, grinning. “I shot at rocks an’ things all aboot, but either I’m no good or the Winchester shoots high. I reckon it does. I put those holes in my hat with the Colt.—First three shots! Just throwed the gun—you know—an’ I was thinkin’ aboot Lee Tate.”
“Rich!—What kind of talk is thet?” rejoined Tanner, with reproof. “Reckon your shootin’ was wonderful, but your talk is crazy.”
“Shore it is, Cap. But don’t mind. I just was in fun. He’s been a lot on my mind lately.”
“Ahuh! Wal, forget him, an’ all the rest of the Tates. . . . Throw a stick on the fire and set down.”
Rich laid aside the rifle and replenished the fire, after which he settled himself in his favorite seat.
“I had a fight with Nesta this mawnin’,” he announced.
“Fight! What you talkin’ about, boy?”
“Twice I caught her slippin’ out. She wanted to get to you first.”
“Wal, I reckon I’m between the devil an’ the deep sea,” returned Tanner, ruefully.
“Meanin’ me as the devil, an’ Nesta as the deep sea!—It’s shore aboot right. I’m gettin’ mean an’ Nesta is deep. But she wouldn’t lie to me. I know that. . . . My Gawd, Cap—how I love her!—We Ameses are a queer outfit. Reckon it’s because so many of us are twins. My father had a twin brother. An’ there were twins among his people before. But never brother an’ sister. Nesta an’ I are the first. . . . If anythin’ bad happened to her it’d be like cuttin’ part of me out. . . . Nature plays some tricks, Cap. An’ she shore hasn’t any respect for anybody. There was a family over heah named Hines. They had twins—an’ they were fastened to each other in a way that if they’d lived would have been shore horrible. We had a cow once that gave birth to two calves fastened together. We had to kill them. I reckon it doesn’t make no difference to nature whether it’s cattle or people. Anyway, Nesta an’ I are awful close together. It scares hell out of me lately. I feel so much the way she feels that it’s hard to be myself.”
“Ahuh.—Wal, Rich, what’s on your mind?” returned Tanner, straddling a bench.
“There’s shore a lot. But Nesta first an’ most. . . . Cap, it was darn good of you to fetch us all those presents. Only if you had to give all that pretty stuff to Nesta I wish you’d waited. Till Christmas, anyway.”
“Why so, lad?”
“Nesta’s been strange this summer an’ fall. Now she’ll be plumb out of her haid.”
“Rich, are you afraid the pretty clothes will hurry her into marryin’?”
“Lord! I wish they would!” ejaculated Ames. “Cap, the truth’ll sound sort of silly, I reckon. But I cain’t help my feelin’s. . . . Lil Snell is goin’ to be married this month at Shelby. Hall Barnes is the fellow. I reckon you don’t know him. I do—a little, an’ I’m not crazy aboot him. Nesta went to school with him. You know father sent Nesta back to Texas before an’ through the cattle war heah. Well, she knows Hall an’ says he’s not such a bad sort. Maybe it’s true. But he’s related to the Tates, an’ he’s thick with Lee. . . . Well, Nesta wasn’t goin’ to this weddin’ because she hadn’t no dress. An’ I was plumb glad. Now you’ve gone an’ fetched her one!—Cap, last night after you left she came runnin’ in on us, dressed all in white. My Gawd! You should have seen her! Well, she raved aboot goin’ to the weddin’. An’ mother raved with her.”
“Wal, lad, there’s nothin’ hardly worrisome in thet,” rejoined the trapper. “I think it’s fine. An’ I’m goin’ to show up in Shelby, jest to see Nesta in thet white outfit.”
“Cap, Nesta has got you the same way she’s got Sam,” expostulated Rich.
“Humph! An’ how’s thet?”
“Plumb out of your haid.”
“Haw! Haw! Is thet why she wanted