Rimrock Trail - J. Allan Dunn

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where a light twinkled, the cook shack, the corrals, up to the main house. There they alighted. All about cottonwoods rustled in the dark, the air was sweet and cool, not far from frost. Molly Casey shivered as she moved stiffly in her saddle. Sandy lifted her from the saddle and carried her up the steps, across the porch, kicking open the door of the living-room where the embers of a fire glowed. There was no other light in the big room, but there was sufficient to show the great form of Mormon, stowed at ease in a chair, asleep and snoring.

      Sam struck a match and lit a lamp. He struck Mormon mightily between his shoulders.

      "Gawd!" gasped the heavyweight partner. "I been asleep. But there's a kittle of hot water, Sandy. Where's the—what in time are you totin'? A gel or a boy?"

      "This is Miss Molly Casey," said Sandy gravely, setting down the girl. "Miss Casey, this is Mr. Peters. Mormon, Miss Molly is goin' to tie up to the Three Star for a bit."

      Mormon, a little sheepish at the suddenly developing age of the girl as she shook hands with him, recovered himself and beamed at her. "Yo're sure welcome," he said. "Boss hired you? Cowgirl or cook?"

      Sandy noticed the girl's lips quiver and he slipped an arm about her shoulders. He was not woman-shy with this girl who needed help, and who seemed a boy.

      "Don't you take no notice of him an' his kiddin'," he said. "We'll make him rustle some grub fo' all of us an' then we-all 'll turn in. I'll show you yore room. Up the stairs an' the last door on the right. Here's some matches. There's a lamp on the bureau up there. Give you a call when supper's ready."

      He led her to the door and gave her a friendly little shove, guessing that she wanted to be alone.

      "The kid's lost her father, lost most everything 'cept her dawg," he said to Mormon. "Thought we might adopt her, sort of, then I thought mebbe we'd hire her—for mascot."

      "Lost her daddy? An' me hornin' in an' tryin' to kid her! I ain't got the sense of a drowned gopher, sometimes," said Mormon contritely.

      "She's game, plumb through, ain't she, Sam? Stands right up to trouble?"

      "You bet. Mormon, open up a can of greengages, will ye? I reckon she's got a sweet tooth, same as me."

      Molly Casey was not through standing up to trouble. They coaxed her to eat and she managed to make a meal that satisfied them. Then she got up to go to her room, with Grit nuzzling close to her, her fingers in his ruff, twisting nervously at the strands of hair.

      "Do you reckon," she asked the three partners, "that Dad knows he fooled me when he told me to jump? If I'd known he c'udn't git clear I'd have stuck—same as he would if I was caught. Do you reckon he knows that—now?"

      "I'd be surprised if he didn't," said Sandy gravely. "You did what he wanted, anyway."

      She shook her head.

      "If I'd been on the outside, he w'udn't have jumped, no matter how much I begged him. I didn't think of the brake. Don't seem quite square, somehow, way I acted. Good night. What time do you-all git up?"

      "With the sun, soon's the big bell rings," said Sandy. "Good night."

      She looked at them gravely and went out.

      "Botherin' about playin' square in jumpin'," said Sandy. "That gel is square on all twelve eidges. Sam, slide out an' muzzle that bell. She'll likely cry herself to sleep after a bit but she'll need all the sleep she can git. No sense in wakin' her up at sun-up."

      "How'd you come to know so much about gels?" asked Mormon.

      "Me? I don't know the first thing about 'em," protested Sandy.

      "No more'n any man," put in Sam. "'Cept it's Mormon. He's sure had the experience."

      "Experience," said Mormon, with a yawn, "may teach a man somethin' about mules but not wimmen. Woman is like the climate of the state of Kansas, where I was born. Thirty-four below at times and as high as one-sixteen above. Blowin' hot an' cold, rangin' from a balmy breeze through a rain shower or a thunder-storm, up to a snortin' tornado. Average number of workin' days, about one hundred an' fifty. Them's statistics. It ain't so hard to set down what a woman's done at the end of a year, if you got a good mem'ry, but tryin' to guess what she is goin' to do has got the weather man backed off inter a corner an' squealin' for help. They ain't all like Kansas. My first resembled it, the second was sorter tropic—she run off with a rainmaker an' I hear she's been divorced three times since then. Mebbe that's an exaggeration. My third must have been born someways nigh the no'th pole. W'en she got mad she'd freeze the blood in yore veins.

      "No, sir, that feller in the po'try who says, 'I learned about wimmen from 'er,' was braggin'. Now, this gel of Casey's 'pears like what her dad 'ud call a good prospect, but you can't tell. Fool's gold is bright enough but you can't change it to the real stuff no matter how you polish it."

      "Ever see the sour-milk batter Pedro fixes fo' hot cakes?" asked Sam.

      "Sure I have. What's that got to do with it?" demanded Mormon.

      "That's what you've got sloppin' inside of yore haid 'stead of brains. Yore disposition concernin' wimmen is gen'ally soured. You 'mind me of the man from New Jersey who come out west to buy a ranch. A hawss throwed him five times hand-runnin'. He ropes a steer that happens to run into the bum loop he was swingin' an' it snakes him out'n the saddle. A pesky cow chases him when he was afoot, a couple calves gits a rope twisted round his stummick an' lastly a mule kicks him into a bunch of cactus. Whereupon he remarks, 'I don't figger I was calculated for runnin' a cattle ranch,' sells out an' goes back to herdin' muskeeters in New Jersey.

      "Mormon, you warn't calculated to handle wimmen. This li'l' gel is game as they make 'em, an' I reckon she's right sweet if she on'y gits a chance. Leastwise, I see several signs of pay dirt this afternoon an' evenin' as I reckon Sandy done the same. She's been trailin' her dad all over hell an' creation, talkin' like him, swearin' like him, actin' like him. Never see nothin' different. All she needs is a chance."

      "What's the idee in pickin' on me?" asked Mormon aggrievedly. "She's as welcome as grass in spring. They ain't no one got a bigger heart than me fo' kids."

      "No one got a bigger heart, mebbe," said Sam caustically. "Nor none a smaller brain. All engine an' no gasoline in the tank!"

      "She's an orphan," went on Sandy. "She ain't got a cent that I know of. The claims her old dad mentioned ain't no good because, in the first place, they'd have been worked if they was; second place, they're over to Dynamite an' the sharps say Dynamite's a flivver. All she has in sight is the dawg. Some dawg! Comes in from the desert an' takes us out to her an' Pat Casey—him dyin'. Ef it hadn't been fo' the dawg, she'd have stayed there, to my notion. Got some sort of idee she'd deserted ship ef she hadn't stuck till it was too late fo' her to crawl out of that slit in the mesa. She's fifteen an' she's got sense. I figger we better turn in right now an' hold a pow-wow with the gel ter-morrer."

      "Second the motion," said Sam.

      "Third it," said Mormon.

      And the Three Musketeers of the Range went off to bed.

      MOLLY

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      Molly came down next morning in the faded blue gingham. Sandy marked how worn it was and marked an item in his mind—clothes. He smiled at her with the sudden showing of his sound white teeth that made many friends. She was much too young, too frank, too like a boy to affect him with any of his woman-shyness. He did not realize how close she was to womanhood, seeing only how much she must have missed of real girlhood.

      Molly had a snubby nose, a wide mouth, Irish eyes of blue that were far apart and crystal clear, freckles and a lot of brown hair that she wore in a long braid wound twice about her well-shaped head. She was a combination of curves and angles, of well-rounded

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