第26章

"I've just sent up the doctor," was his answer to my greeting."Ilooked for you last night, couldn't find you, and so rode off to the Fort.""What's up?" I said, with fear in my heart, for no light thing moved The Duke.

"Haven't you heard? It's Gwen," he said, and the next minute or two he gave to Jingo, who was indulging in a series of unexpected plunges.When Jingo was brought down, The Duke was master of himself and told his tale with careful self-control.

Gwen, on her father's buckskin bronco, had gone with The Duke to the big plain above the cut-bank where Joe was herding the cattle.

The day was hot and a storm was in the air.They found Joe riding up and down, singing to keep the cattle quiet, but having a hard time to hold the bunch from breaking.While The Duke was riding around the far side of the bunch, a cry from Gwen arrested his attention.Joe was in trouble.His horse, a half-broken cayuse, had stumbled into a badger-hole and had bolted, leaving Joe to the mercy of the cattle.At once they began to sniff suspiciously at this phenomenon, a man on foot, and to follow cautiously on his track.Joe kept his head and walked slowly out, till all at once a young cow began to bawl and to paw the ground.In another minute one, and then another of the cattle began to toss their heads and bunch and bellow till the whole herd of two hundred were after Joe.

Then Joe lost his head and ran.Immediately the whole herd broke into a thundering gallop with heads and tails aloft and horns rattling like the loading of a regiment of rifles.

"Two more minutes," said The Duke, "would have done for Joe, for Icould never have reached him; but, in spite of my most frantic warnings and signalings, right into the face of that mad, bellowing, thundering mass of steers rode that little girl.Nerve!

I have some myself, but I couldn't have done it.She swung her horse round Joe and sailed out with him, with the herd bellowing at the tail of her bronco.I've seen some cavalry things in my day, but for sheer cool bravery nothing touches that.""How did it end? Did they run them down?" I asked, with terror at such a result.

"No, they crowded her toward the cut-bank, and she was edging them off and was almost past, when they came to a place where the bank bit in, and her iron-mouthed brute wouldn't swerve, but went pounding on, broke through, plunged; she couldn't spring free because of Joe, and pitched headlong over the bank, while the cattle went thundering past.I flung myself off Jingo and slid down somehow into the sand, thirty feet below.Here was Joe safe enough, but the bronco lay with a broken leg, and half under him was Gwen.She hardly knew she was hurt, but waved her hand to me and cried out, 'Wasn't that a race? I couldn't swing this hard-headed brute.Get me out.' But even as she spoke the light faded from her eyes, she stretched out her hands to me, saying faintly, 'Oh, Duke,' and lay back white and still.We put a bullet into the buckskin's head, and carried her home in our jackets, and there she lies without a sound from her poor, white lips."The Duke was badly cut up.I had never seen him show any sign of grief before, but as he finished the story he stood ghastly and shaking.He read my surprise in my face and said:

"Look here, old chap, don't think me quite a fool.You can't know what that little girl has done for me these years.Her trust in me--it is extraordinary how utterly she trusts me--somehow held me up to my best and back from perdition.It is the one bright spot in my life in this blessed country.Everyone else thinks me a pleasant or unpleasant kind of fiend."I protested rather faintly.

"Oh, don't worry your conscience," he answered, with a slight return of his old smile, "a fuller knowledge would only justify the opinion." Then, after a pause, he added: "But if Gwen goes, I must pull out, I could not stand it."As we rode up, the doctor came out.

"Well, what do you think?" asked The Duke.