Read Ebook: Troubled Waters by Raine William MacLeod

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Ebook has 1460 lines and 56194 words, and 30 pages

Ruth, terror-stricken, believed the man was working himself up to do murder. She wanted to cry out, to rush forward and beg him to stop. But her throat was parched and her limbs weighted with heavy chains.

"Your wife left you because you are a bully and a drunkard. I had nothing to do with her going," retorted McCoy.

"You're a liar--a rotten liar! You got her to run away with you. You took her in your car to Wagon Wheel. You gave her money to buy a ticket. You were seen on the train with her. I swore I'd kill you on sight, and I'm going to do it. Get out of the way, Silcott!"

The energy flowed back into Ruth's limbs. She threw in the clutch and drove forward furiously. There was the sound of a shot, then of another. Next moment she was pushing home the brake and shutting off the gas. The car slammed to a halt, its wheels hard against the porch. She had driven directly between the sheepman and his intended victim.

Out of the haze that for a moment enveloped Ruth's senses boomed a savage, excited voice:

"Turn me loose, Mac! Lemme go! I'll finish the damned sheepman while I'm on the job."

The scene opened before her eyes like a moving-picture film. On the porch her husband was struggling with a man for the possession of a gun, while young Silcott was sagging against a corner pillar, one hand clutched to his bleeding shoulder. Thirty yards away Tait lay on the ground, face down, beside his horse. From the corral, from the store, from the adjoining doctor's office men poured upon the scene.

The place was suddenly alive with gesticulating people.

Rowan tore the rifle from the man with whom he was wrestling. "Don't be a fool, Falkner. You've done enough already. I shouldn't wonder if Tait had got his."

"He had it coming to him, if ever a man had. If I'd been two seconds later you'd have been a goner, Mac. I just beat him to it. Good riddance if he croaks, I say."

McCoy caught sight of Ruth. He moved toward her, his eyes alive with surprise and dismay.

"You--here!"

"He didn't hit you!" She strangled a sob.

"No. Falkner fired from the store window. It must have shaken his aim. He hit Larry."

Rowan turned swiftly to his friend, who grinned feebly up at him.

"'S all right, Mac. I'll ride in a heap of round-ups yet. He punctured my shoulder."

"Good! Let's have a look at it."

A fat little man with a doctor's case puffed up to the porch as McCoy was cutting away the shirt of the wounded man from the shoulder.

"Here! Here! Wha's the matter? Lemme see. Get water--bandages," he exploded in staccato snorts like the engine of a motor cycle.

Ruth flew into the house to obey orders. When she returned with a basin of water and towels the doctor had gone.

"Doc is over looking at Tait," explained her husband. "Says Larry has only a flesh wound. We'll take him home with us in the car. You don't mind?"

"Of course we'll look after him till he's well," Ruth agreed.

"Rest and good food and proper care. You'll get it at the Circle Diamond," the girl interrupted decisively. "We needn't discuss that. You're going with us."

She had her way, as she usually had. After Doctor Irwin had dressed the shoulder the young ranchman got into the back seat of the car beside Ruth. McCoy asked a question point-blank of the fussy little physician:

"What about Tait? Will he live?"

"Ought to. If no complications. Just missed lower intestines--near thing. Lot of damn fools--all of you!" he snorted.

"Sure thing," grinned Silcott. "Come and see me to-night, Doc."

"H'mp!"

"I'll be looking for you, Doctor Irwin," Ruth called back from the moving car.

The doctor growled out what might be taken for a promise if one were an optimist.

From the rim of the valley McCoy looked down and spoke grimly: "I notice that Tait's herders have changed their minds. They're driving the sheep back along the road they came."

"Before we're through with them they'll learn where to head in," boasted Larry querulously, for his wound was aching a good deal. "Next time they cross the dead line there'll be a grave dug for someone."

"I wouldn't say that, Larry," objected Rowan gently. "We'd better cut out threats. They lead to trouble. We don't want to put ourselves in the wrong unnecessarily. Take Falkner now. I was just in time to keep him from finishing Tait."

"Oh, Falkner! He's crazy to be a killer. But at that I don't blame him this time," commented the younger man.

Silcott went to bed in the guest chamber between clean sheets, and sank back with a sigh of content into the pillow. The atmosphere of home indefinably filled the room. The cool tints of the wall paper, the pictures, the feminine touches visible here and there, all were contributing factors, but the light-footed girl, so quiet and yet so very much alive in every vivid gesture, every quick glance, was the centre of the picture.

He knew that she had something on her mind, that she was troubled and distrait. He thought he could guess the reason, and felt it incumbent upon him to set himself right with her. When, toward evening, she brought him a dainty tray of food he could keep away from the subject no longer.

"I was a sweep," he confessed humbly.

For an instant she did not know what he meant. Then: "Yes," she agreed.

"I'm sorry. You've made me ashamed. Won't you forgive me?" he pleaded.

Ruth had plenty of capacity for generosity. This good-looking boy was ill and helpless. He appealed strongly to the mother instinct that is alive in all good women. He was the central figure, too, of an adventure which had excited her and intrigued her interest. Moreover, she was cherishing a new and more important resentment, one which made her annoyance at him of small moment.

"Do you mean it? Are you really sorry?" she asked.

He nodded. "I think so. I know I ought to be. Anyhow, I'm sorry you're angry at me," he answered with a little flare of boyish audacity.

She bit her lip, then laughed in spite of herself. She held out her hand a little hesitantly, but he knew he was forgiven.

Young Silcott's fever mounted toward evening, but when Doctor Irwin arrived he gave him a sleeping powder and before midnight the wounded man fell asleep. Ruth tiptoed about the room while she arranged on a little table beside the bed his medicines and drinks in case he awakened later. After lowering the light she stole away silently to her own bedroom.

Rowan knocked a few minutes later. He heard her move across the floor in her soft slippers. She wore a dainty crepe-de-Chine robe that lent accent to the fresh softness of her young flesh. She had just been brushing her hair, and the long, heavy, blue-black braids were thrown forward over her shoulders.

All day McCoy had been swept by waves of tenderness for this girl wife of his who had risked her life to save him by driving into the line of fire so pluckily. He had longed to open his heart to her, and he had not dared. Now there was a new note about her that puzzled him, one he had never seen before. The eyes that flashed into his were fierce with defiance. Her slim figure was very erect and straight.

"What do you want?" she demanded.

He was taken aback. Never before had her manner been less than friendly to him. While she was in this mood he could not voice his surcharge of feeling for her.

"You are tired," he suggested.

A sudden gusty passion flared in her face. "Did you come to tell me that?"

"No. To thank you."

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