he was still hot on the trail and expecting every moment to have his horse shot from under him, when monty pulled open the door and walked in upon him, swearing affectionately. gary sat up, turned down a corner of the page to mark his place, and reached for his smoking material.
“golly grandma, i meant to have supper ready!” he exclaimed. “but i got to reading and forgot all about eating.”
“how yuh-all been making out?” monty wanted to know. “going to catch a ride back to town?”
gary licked the cigarette paper and shook his head while he pressed it into place. “no, the action is just beginning to get snappy now,” he said.
“meanin’ what?” monty paused in the act of lifting a stove lid.
“meaning that i just put on a fight scene, and ran the heavy clean out of the cañon as per usual.”
“yeah?” monty’s tone betrayed a complete lack of understanding.
“you bet. never saw a leading man get licked, did you? i’m starring in this piece—so naturally i just had to put the heavy on the run.”
“what’s a heavy?”
“the villain. pat connolly went and had another impulse. she let the place on shares to a gink that i’ll bet has done time. he had every mark of a crook, and he had the darndest holdup game you ever saw. pat connolly doesn’t know anything at all about ranches. she went and——”
“pat connolly—she?” monty was dipping cold water into the coffeepot, and he spilled a cupful.
“er—yes.” gary reddened a bit. “she’s a girl all right. finest in the world. patricia connolly’s her name, and if i can pull her clear on this damned johnnywater investment and remain on speaking terms with pat, i expect she’ll become mrs. marshall. she’s not at all like other girls, monty. pat’s got brains. a crackerjack stenographer and bookkeeper. got a man-sized job with the consolidated grain and milling company in the city. you may have heard of them.”
“sure,” said monty. “sent there once for some oil cakes to winter my she stock on. costs too much, though. a cow ain’t worth what it costs to feed one through the winter. what about this feller yuh run off?”
gary got up and began helping with the supper while he told all about james blaine hawkins and his agreement of contract.
monty was in the position of a man who dips into the middle of a story and finds it something of a jumble because he does not know what went before. he asked a good many questions, so that the telling lasted through supper and the dishwashing afterwards. by the time they were ready to sit down and smoke with the comfortable assurance that further exertion would not be necessary that night, monty was pretty well up-to-date on the affairs of gary marshall and patricia connolly, up to and including the arrival of james blaine hawkins at johnnywater and his hurried departure that morning.
“and yuh-all say the feller seen something,” monty drawled meditatively after a minute or two of silence. “did he tell yuh what it was he saw?”
“no, except that he thought it was a man who had slipped into the cabin when he wasn’t looking. but it was the cat that really put him on the run. seems he hated to see a cat unless i saw it too.”
monty looked up quickly. in gary’s tone he had caught a certain reluctance to speak of the man which james blaine hawkins declared he saw. he was willing enough to explain all about james blaine hawkins and the cat, and he had laughed when he told how he had pretended not to hear the voice. but of the possible apparition of a man gary did not like to talk.
“tell the truth, now—ain’t yuh scared to stay there alone?” monty’s question was anxious.
gary shrugged his shoulders and blew a smoke ring, watching it drift up toward the ceiling. “being scared or not being scared makes no difference whatever. i’m going to stay. for a while, anyway.”
“i wisht you’d tell me what for,” monty urged uneasily. “a man that can hold down the position and earn the money yuh did in pictures kain’t afford to set around in johnnywater cañon lookin’ after two shoats and a dozen or fifteen hens. i don’t agree with miss connolly at all. i’d be mighty proud if i could do what i’ve seen yuh-all do in pictures. your actin’ was real—and i reckon that’s what puts a man at the top. i know the top-notchers all act so good you kain’t ketch ’em at it. yuh just seem to be lookin’ in on ’em whilst they’re livin’.”
“the best acting i’ve done,” chuckled gary, “was last night and this morning. i was scared to death that the pinto cat would come and hop up on my lap like she usually does. i’d have had a merry heck of a time acting like she wasn’t there. but i put it over—enough to send him breezing down the cañon, anyway.”
“you’re liable to have trouble with that feller yet,” warned monty. “if he got an agreement out of miss connolly, he ain’t liable to give up the idea of holding her to it. have yuh-all got a gun?”
“an automatic, yes.” gary pulled the gun from his hip pocket. “i carry this just in case. i was born and raised where men pack guns—but they didn’t ride with ’em cocked and in their hands ready to shoot, like we do in the movies. there’s a lot of hokum i do before the camera that gives me a pain. so if i should happen to need a gun, i’ve got one. but don’t you worry about james blaine hawkins. he won’t show up again.”
“i wouldn’t be none too sure of that,” monty reiterated admonishingly. “he’s liable to get to thinkin’ it over in town and git his courage back. things like johnnywater has got don’t look so important when you’re away off somewhere just thinkin’ about it.”
“i guess you’re right, at that,” gary admitted. “he’ll probably get over the cat and the voice, all right, and—that other spell of imagination. but without meaning to brag on myself, i think he’ll study it over a while before he comes around trying to bully me again. you see, monty, the man’s an awful coward. i slapped him twice and even then he wouldn’t fight. he just backed up away from me and cooled right down.”
“them’s the kind uh skunks yuh want to look out for,” monty declared sententiously.
but gary only laughed at him and called him the original gloom, and insisted upon talking of something altogether different.
monty, it transpired, had promised to help a man through haying over in pahranagat valley and meant to start the next day. he was frankly relieved to know that gary was still all right. he had wanted to ride over to johnnywater again before going to pahranagat, but had had too much riding of his own to do.
“but if you’re bent on hangin’ out there,” he said, after some futile argument, “i’ll ride on over when i get through with this job. what yuh-all trying to do over there, anyway? hate yourself to death?”
“well, i hope i’m pleasing pat,” gary laughed evasively.
“well, i hate to be butting in,” monty said diffidently, “but if she wanted yuh to stay over here and run johnnywater, it don’t seem to me like she’d ’a’ sent this hawkins feller over with a five years’ contract to run the place on shares. didn’t she send yuh no word about why she done it?”
“she did not! i have a hunch pat’s pretty sore at me. you see, she sprung this deal on me kinda sudden, right on top of a strawberry shortcake when i didn’t want to think. i told her what i thought about it—and i told it straight. so we had a little—er—argument. she up and threw my profile in my face, and called me flabby souled. so i up and left. and i didn’t go back to tell her good-by when i started over here, so i wouldn’t be surprised if little pat connolly is pretty well peeved.”
monty smoked and studied the matter. “does she know you’re over here?” he asked abruptly. “seems kinda funny to me, that she’d go and send hawkins over here without sayin’ a word to yuh about it. she could ’a’ wrote, couldn’t she? if yuh-all didn’t tell her yuh was coming, how would she know yuh was here?”
“why, she could call up the studio and get the dope from mills, my director,” gary explained uncomfortably.
“but would she? seems like as if i was a girl and had any spunk, i wouldn’t want to let on that the feller i was engaged to had gone off somewheres without letting me know about it.”
“that’s one way to look at it,” gary admitted. “but pat’s nobody’s fool. she could find out all right, without letting on.”
“well, it’s none of my put-in—but i don’t reckon yuh-all are pleasing pat connolly much by sticking over here.”
gary got up and stretched his arms above his head. “she wanted me to sit in my cabin and listen to a saddle horse champing hay,” he contended lightly. “i think i’ll go down and give jazz a feed of barley to champ.”
monty understood quite well that gary meant to end the discussion right there. he said no more about it, therefore. but he promised himself—and mentally he promised patricia as well—that he would manage somehow to bring about a complete understanding between these two obstinate young people.
they slept shoulder to shoulder that night in monty’s bunk, and the next morning they saddled early and each rode his way, feeling the better for the meeting.
