The Range Boss, The Trail To Yesterday & West! (3 Westerns in One Edition) by Charles Alden Seltzer

Author:Charles Alden Seltzer [Seltzer, Charles Alden]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788027224500
Publisher: Musaicum Press
Published: 2017-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter XV. The Runaway Comes Home

Table of Contents

Masten’s note to Ruth contained merely the information that he was going to Lazette, and that possibly he might not return for two weeks. He hinted that he would probably be called upon to go to Santa Fe on business, but if so he would apprise her of that by messenger. He gave no reason for his sudden leave-taking, or no explanation of his breach of courtesy in not waiting to see her personally. The tone of the note did not please Ruth. It had evidently been written hurriedly, on a sheet of paper torn from a pocket notebook. That night she studied it long, by the light from the kerosene lamp in her room, and finally crumpled it up and threw it from her. Then she sat for another long interval, her elbows on the top of the little stand that she used as a dressing table, her chin in her hands, staring with unseeing eyes into a mirror in front of her—or rather, at two faces that seemed to be reflected in the glass: Masten’s and Randerson’s.

Next morning she got downstairs late, to find breakfast over and Randerson gone. Later in the morning she saw Uncle Jepson waving a hand to her from the corral, and she ran down there, to find her pony standing outside the fence, meek and docile. The bridle rein, knotted and broken, dangled in the dust at his head.

She took up the end with the knot in it.

“He’s been tied!” she exclaimed. She showed Uncle Jepson the slip knot. And then she became aware of Aunt Martha standing beside her, and she showed it to her also. And then she saw a soiled blue neckerchief twisted and curled in the knot, and she examined it with wide eyes.

“Why, it’s Randerson’s!” she declared, in astonishment. “How on earth did it get here?”

And now her face crimsoned, for illumination had come to her. She placed the neckerchief behind her, with a quick hope that her relatives had not seen it, nor had paid any attention to her exclamation. But she saw Uncle Jepson grin broadly, and her face grew redder with his words:

“I cal’late the man who lost that blue bandanna wasn’t a tol’able piece away when that knot was tied.”

“Jep Coakley, you mind your own business!” rebuked Aunt Martha sharply, looking severely at Uncle Jepson over the rims of her spectacles.

“Don’t you mind him, honey,” she consoled, putting an arm around the girl as Uncle Jepson went away, chuckling. “Why, girl,” she went on, smiling at Ruth’s crimson face, “you don’t blame him, do you? If you don’t know he likes you, you’ve been blind to what I’ve been seeing for many days. Never mention to him that you know he tied the pony, dear. For he’s a gentleman, in spite of that.”

And obediently, though with cheeks that reddened many times during the process, and laughter that rippled through her lips occasionally, Ruth washed the neckerchief, folded

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