McCall's Magazine/Billings' Cora

by Vingie E. Roe

“Goin' agin yore own blood, that's what you be!”

 

WHICH pulls stronger at the human heartstrings—loyalty or love? Which will conquer Cora—her loyalty to a villainous father with contempt for the law, or her love for the stern young sheriff who has sworn to uphold that law? Her struggle to choose the one and to forsake the other makes of this one of the most dramatic and poignant stories that McCall's has ever published

 

Billings' Cora

By VINGIE E. ROE

AUTHOR OF “NAMELESS RIVER”,
“THE SPLENDID ROAD”

ILLUSTRATED BY J. W. SCHLAIKJER

A LITTLE soft wind came out of the south, running with cool feet over the sleek yellow grass of the sun-parched land. Drouth was heavy on the great country of shining slope and blue Sierra. Deer were dying higher up, pathetic, big-eyed with outstretched muzzles about dried-up springs. And in a race with the calamity every rancher in the foothills had rushed his cattle down to what market was possible.

But if one could forget this tragic knowledge which hung over the the little world of meadow, slope and valley, there was beauty everywhere; beauty of a sky intensely blue, flecked with tiny clouds; of the sharp contrast of dark green conifer and golden, sun-cured grass, of the wide pageant of each twilight with its gorgeous colours. Something of all this stirred in the soul of Billings' Cora as she sat at her father's sorry yard, her knees hunched in the crook of her arms, her bare feet crossed on each other. Billings' Cora was an uncertain quantity, a slim wisp of arrogance, eager ignorant of all save hill and wind-set. Her eyes were blue, set in dark lashes to match her heavy hair, and sometimes they were very soft—filled with vague dreams got from much lonely gazing on vase distances.

This same look of softness, of unnamed dreams, had once been her mother's,—before she married Billings on the Texas plains. That had been so long ago, across such great stretches of shiftless poverty, that the drab woman who eked out existence in the dilapidated house would have been astonished to know that she had ever possessed the slightest modicum of grace. Nance Billings sometimes looked at her daughter with half tragic wonder as to the why of life.

But to Cora there was no doubt, no fault to find in the Universe. She knew well the answer to its profound riddle, knew it with such a surge of the healthy young heart of her as to well nigh choke her. Life was sunshine—the eternal sunshine of the West Coast slopes—and the feel of winds blowing in her face. It was space and lonely freedom,—and Silver King. Silver King, the magnificent, the incomparable, the one high-light of splendor which had ever touched the family of Billings! Silver King to whom she was calling now at intervals as she sat on her stone, her fingers between her lips. He stood out on the shining golden background like a spot of pure white light, his great mane wimpled in that little wind from the south and his tail spread away from his legs like a fan of foamy lace.

When Billings' Cora called him thus and waited, cold chills chased each other down her back, a sort of dizziness encompassed her, a sense of thrilling joy so intense as to be almost unbearable. It was a game they played, the girl and the great white horse, a fine heady game which had for its ending the very acme of wild romance.

The King was free. Billings' homestead was not fenced. Why should a man spend all that labor when there was abundance of Government land on all sides, unlimited forage for his straggling stock?

So the King grazed at will, hampered by nothing save the thin thread of listening. A small, invisible cord that bound him irrevocably to the shining slopes, the wooded gulches of the Billings holding, and to Cora. It was on him now. With the first shrill notes of the familiar whistle it drew about his spirit, a touch laid down. He flung up his great head and turned his silver face toward the log house under the pine trees.

Again came the call, high, sweet, imperative, and he stamped one white hoof, striped with black. He flung his muzzle up and down.

The girl on the stone grinned, her blue eyes glistened. She waited, prolonging the delightful play. When she called again the King answered, a keen shaking peal that cut the morning stillness, and, keeping to the spot where he stood, he turned his shining body—the white spirit of a horse—and came mincing forward, stiff-legged.

One—two—three,—came the whistles, snapping, sharp, commanding.

The mincing gait quickened, loosened, became a trot, a canter, and finally, casting play to the winds, he stretched out his beautiful body and came sweeping up the long slope, running.

The girl leaped from the rock and went to meet him, arms outstretched, the sun on her laughing face. They fell together, literally, nuzzling each other, the one with playful lips, the other with softly pummeling fists, and from the pocket of the faded overalls which inadequately covered her, Billings' Cora brought forth two bits of dry bread.These might have been equine ambrosia from the very evident satisfaction they gave the recipient, for Silver King ate them to the last crumb and hunted her garments for more. But the girl was eager for the culmination of the play and setting her bare toes against the knuckles of his foreleg at the knee, tangled her fingers in his mane and went up like a monkey. She flung out her arms in a wide gesture, cried out, an inarticulate sound that was plain as light to the King; in another moment they were sweeping down the grassy slope like all-possessed. That was the last the log house saw of them that day.

They sailed down over miles of slippery slants, turned left and threaded more miles of scattered pine trees, idled hours in a gulch where a precious, priceless spring kept faith with the land. Here there would have been verdure save for the trampling feet of the poor beasts, both wild and domestic, which came to it daily. The King drank daintily of its small trickle and Cora hung lolling on his back, one knee hooked over, the other leg dangling. She hummed a wordless tune and her busy fingers combed the ripples of his shining mane She put her cheek against it, kissed it, cocked her frowsy young head this way and that, folding the silken strands over her hands as a great dame might examine fabrics brought for her inspection. This soft perfection of the King's regalia was her all of finery. There was nothing in the Billings log house finer than gingham, and the coarse white muslin of which her mother made her scant underclothes.

While she played a sound made her pause—alert as a wild animal; the sound of hoofs against stone and dry hill-side. The King's every muscle grew taut—he was ready to fly.

But Billings' Cora was not ready to fly—not until she had seen who might be coming down along her lonely domain. Strangers were few and far between on the Billings land. And if she should wish to go suddenly for any reason, she knew of none living—so high handed was she—that trod the earth who could catch the Silver King. Bah! Nothing less than the wild white birds which sometimes came roaring out of the blue horizon and sailed across the heavens a mile up, could overtake or rival her darling's speed. But the air-ships were good only in the skies!

So she shook her head, just to make herself feel more arrogant, sat straight, hand on hip, and watched the man who came riding down upon her.

With the first swift glimpse horse and rider wavered a bit to her vision. She had seen him before—several times. The Sheriff! He was tall and well set-up, and he rode well a large and powerful blue roan horse. He was past the first of his youth, being in the early thirties, and the steady grey eye of him, the firm, quiet mouth, passed among men for a sign-board to the character beneath. Twice he had been elected to his office and he wore its star with an old-fashioned reverence. In offense against the law, be it big or little, he was adamant.

“Good morning, Miss Billings,” he said, lifting his broad hat.

“Howdy,” said Cora with her father's Texas drawl.

The blue roan stuck its nose to the shallow water and drank thirstily.

“You've given him a grillin',' said the girl, “he's tired.”

“A little.”

They sat in silence for a bit. Then:

“Where you been?” said Cora.

“Over toward Shadow Cove in Star Valley.”

“What you after?”

“A man.”

“Huh!” said Cora loftily, “an' didn't get him?”

“Not this time,—but I will.” The girl rocked with laughter, swinging her slim legs along the King's silver sides. The man smiled, contemplating her.

“You haven't much confidence in your sheriff, I take it?” he said pleasantly. “You wouldn't be afraid of him, yourself?”

The mirth died out of her. She turned her bright blue eyes upon him gravely. The glance was fleeting. One slim bare foot tucked itself in under the King's foreleg

“Yes,” she said oddly, “I would be—if I was wicked.” The sheriff's cool eyes flickered. In some inexplainable fashion this rugged girl had disconcerted him. He changed the subject.

“Suppose you know about the Rodeo they're going to hold at Rockwell Corners?”

“No!” cried Cora, lighting instantly. “When?”

“Next month,—the fifteenth. Bucking bronco contest, races, a barbecue. Think there'll be a big crowd.”

“Dance?” asked Cora sparkling

“Sure. Open air platform.”

The girl clasped her hands and shook them up and down. “You know, Mister Sheriff,” she said, “I never danced with any one in my life,—but I know I could! Oh, I just know I could do it! I've watched 'em at Fourth o' July and I know I could. There's something inside me that goes steppin' and steppin'—light and easy,—right on every word the music says. And some of them others,—my land! They don't know beans! Walkin' around without a care to the music a-tall. I'd like to show 'em,—I would!”

Illustration: “You haven't confidence in your sheriff, I take it?” he said. “You wouldn't be afraid of him, yourself?” “Yes,” she said oddly, “I would be—if I was wicked.”

The sheriff smiled. “Why don't you go and show them?”

The girl flung out expressive hands. “Who'd ask me?” she said. “Not a dog-gone man! And besides I ain't got no white dress nor any blue sash. Nothin' but a plaid gingham,—and it's shrunk! Nope. We're pore folks, but we got our prides. I won't be there.”

Sheriff Masters laughed as he swung the roan about.

“You wouldn't need anything better than a gingham dress,” he said cryptically, “if you'd brush and braid that hair of yours. Good-bye.”

Billings' Cora did not answer but she sat very still, watching, as he rode away through the thicker growth of pine which fringed the spring. There was something in the look of the blue-shirted back, the easy swing of the broad shoulders, which fascinated her

“Pappy,” she said that night at the supper table, “they's a Rodeo comin' off at Rockwell Corners.”

“Well,” said Chet Billings, “what ef thar is?”

“Barbecue. Buckin'-horses. Dance—platform dance.”

“Well?”

“If I could get there,” said the girl defiantly, “I'd be a-goin'! If I had a decent rag to my back,—and if Mammy had! But we ain't! Nary one of us! And we ain't been to nothin' since that there Fourth o' July three years ago at th' Cove!”

Chet Billings looked at her with distress in his shiftless eyes. “Thar now, honey,” he wheedled, “yore ol' pap's a poor man—”

“If he didn't gamble every Saturday night at the Store,” said Nance Billings bitterly, “his wife and daughter might be like other folks. The girl might go to a merry-makin' once a year, mebby.”

“You accusin' me?” asked her husband in a tragic tone. He laid down his knife and the Adam's apple in his scrawny throat worked. Chet's feelings were near the surface; the hurt they caused him was pitifully real. The woman hurriedly reached to him a conciliating hand. “There,—never mind,” she said, “I didn't mean anything.” But Chet's meal was done-for and Nance followed him out to the back porch where she talked in the old, low tone of soothing which had been the under-note of their life together.

Cora heard them as she cleared up the table and frowned in rebellion.

There was a Rodeo at Rockwell Corners. Hot, dry, dusty, the very breath of present-day Western romance fanned the spot. There was a wide field, flat and level as a floor between the hills. There was an oval track circling its edge There was a flimsy fence all round it with a series of pens and a stockade chute at the right; and a gate beside the chute. There was a big corral behind these where fifteen or twenty horses drowsed in the sun. These were the “buckin' horses,” belonging to the Mellish brothers who followed the Rodeos all summer long, and they were trained to their business like any other artists. Some of them were super-artists, too, be it said in passing: High Light, for instance, on whose flea-bitten back no rider had ever managed to stay the widely-advertised one minute, and Princess May, the beautiful, small sorrel, whose mild dark eyes would have deceived the oldest buckeroo in California, but whose heart, once under a human, became a pit of wickedness. A little farther back was the bull pen, and here big sullen monarchs pawed the earth.

There were rough pine “stands,” bunting-draped, where pies were stacked dozen-high and the delectable smell of frying “hot-dogs” smote the nostril with temptation. There were mothers, ranchers' wives, in cheap voile dresses, dragging babies. There were their husbands in store suits and gaily striped shirt sleeves. Automobiles crowded beetle-like under the trees outside the grounds. There were slim, silk-clad, bobbed-haired flappers with their eye-brows plucked and their lips painted, laughing at everything, with their anaemic escorts from the pavements. And above all there waited the smooth, bare platform, under its thatch of boughs, where the band would station itself after the contests. In short it was Rodeo—long may it prosper! West-coast freedom caught and crystalized!

At noon the baskets came from car and wagon; cloths were spread; women laughed, men made mysterious excursions and came back with color heightened and hilarity enhanced. And there was Sheriff Masters on his big blue roan.

The Rodeo began. Bull-riding came first, a brave, excitable performance. Then came the horses,—the “buckin' horses,” pride of every Rodeo. The pick of the cowboys rode them—or tried to do so—and the work was fast and thrilling. They knew their stuff, these scrawny, indifferent-looking beasts, and the “sun-fishing” they put up, the cork-swing, the “side-winding,” was a joy to Western eyes and wonder to unaccustomed ones. It was pretty work, it was so!

One pair of bright blue eyes, beholding, shone black with joyous excitement. Far over at the side nearest the range hill a noticeable pair stood still: a slim slip of a girl on a magnificent horse—Billings' Cora on Silver King. The wild mop of her long hair was combed and braided into two long tails. The last year's gingham, too badly shrunk for convention, had been frankly split and sewed up the middle of the skirt, forming a remarkable riding garment. She wore no hat but held up her clear brown face to the surge of the sun. The shoes and black cotton stockings which covered her slender feet and legs were very clean and shabby. The King himself was in better case than the lady astride him, for he shone resplendent in his great beauty. Each silver hair of body, mane and tail had been polished by his beloved's hands. So they had come! With her “mammy's” connivance the girl had prepared for the merry-making, radiant with happiness.

Though she knew no single soul over there in the rainbow crowds, though her raiment pricked her pride, though she had not a five-cent piece with which to buy a single ice cream cone, she was wildly and deliriously happy.

This was Rodeo! Here was romance—life—excitement, and the starved young creature drank it in in soul-satisfying gulps.

She watched the broncos stir the dust; heard the cowboys whoop. She yelled when High Light dumped his rider and sniffed scornfully at those who “clawed leather” as two did, frankly, in trying to negotiate Princess May. And then the prettied-up boy with the megaphone was telling the crowd something which Cora could not hear. There was a clearing away of horses in the field, an expectant waiting on the far hillside sparkling with its assorted colors, and' presently five horses trotted out upon the modest track. A thrill went down the girl's straight spine, an exquisite ache of excitement; for this was real stuff—the races!

The five entries lay out along the earth in a string of changing spaces and Billings' Cora leaned forward, clutching the King's mane, her mouth open, her breath stilled. And when one, a slender black, pulled hard away and came running in a length ahead, tears filled her eyes and spilled on her cheeks. She swallowed and laughed and trembled. She waited in hushed silence—and again the line of running horse led this time by a big bay, who never lost his gain from start to finish, though a sorrel held on his flank unvaryingly. Then there was a longer wait, and when they came again there were but three—the black, the bay and the sorrel, picked for the finals. Over on the mottled hillside there was stir and movement. People drifted down to the fence about the track. Voices rose in a fine murmur. Inside Billings' Cora something was beginning to shake, like a heart filled with ecstasy. The slim hand on the King's mane shook. The bare black head flung itself up. “H'm,” said Cora, “H'm!” She leaned down sidewise and kissed the warm white shoulder at her knee.

A cheer floated over—the three had come away. They were neck-and-neck, a beautiful start. All eyes were fastened on them and none saw what began to happen across the oval of the track where the flimsy fence came close to the face of the range hill—none save Sheriff Master who saw everything.

A great white horse came down from its vantage point in long leaps like a deer's, struck the fence's level and kept along it for a while. The horses on the track were coming close—they were abreast—were flashing past and then the white horse rose into the air in a might arc and landed on the track two lengths behind and running; on its back a small figure, head nestled in its mane. Breathless silence held the crowd at that spectacular entry. The three ahead were streaming to the three-quarter post. Behind them a silver streak was closing up. At the post it overhauled them all together. Then it curved out to the edge of the track and sailed around them, curved back into center and came thundering down the home stretch; long, low, level, white nose lying flat, mane a whipping flail that hid its rider, long tail streaming straight behind, it came—a horse-god. It flashed under the wire amid yelling that split the silence and went on, bound for the farther hillside once again

But men and horses at the chute gate barred the way. A babble arose. Excited faces, or bewildered red or angry face of horse owners and riders crowded about.

“Great guns an' glory girl!” cried a cowboy to Billings' Cora, “Where'd you come from. “How did she get in here?” “Who's th' skirt? What horse is that?” “She ain't qualified,—not by a darn sight!” “Won't count—not entered!" And in the midst of it Billings' Cora sat up straight with lifted chin, hand on hip, happy young eyes changing their fire to high-and-mighty rage.

“'Who' she mimicked, “an' 'what'! Who wants t' be qual'fied? An' what with? These here pore skates?” She waved a grandiloquent hand at the panting horses, “H'm! We jest thought we'd show you somethin'—me an' King We did so.”

“She don't come in for no money—” began a truculent rider, but Sheriff Masters shoved his big horse in. He raised his broad hat, bowed and smiled, and the angry blue eyes melted into instant beauty.

“It's not a question of money, is it, Miss Billings?” he said. “The band is moving to the dance platform. Would you like to come on over?”

“You—you askin' me?”

“Sure,” said the Sheriff quietly

Cora whirled the King, regardless of whose booted toes were in the way, and in a moment she was riding down the open track beside the man with the silver star on his vest.

“I braided up my hair,” she said

“So I see,” said the Sheriff, smiling, “and you did come, after all!”

“It took toll of my pride,” she said honestly, “but Mammy said if we made this here gingham to look like a ridin' skirt, why no one would think I was tryin' to fix up—an' couldn't.”

“Just so,” said the Sheriff

At the edge of the crowd about the platform Cora slid from the King's back and dropped her worn reins over his head. He was tied for the day, and would stay tied, despite the curious mob that soon engulfed him. The girl, brown as a young Indian, so poorly clad, went toward the magic spot like one in a dream, though her left elbow was acutely concious of the first man's hand that had ever guided it. She was not afraid, or embarrassed—just “still-hushed” with a drunken ecstasy

“Great whiffs o' smoke! Look what Tom Masters's got!” said a man from Star Valley. Many were already looking. The Sheriff stood with his hands under Cora's elbows, facing her, swaying as the slim, shabby creature caught the rhythm. She caught it, as naturally as a savage caught that same rhythm in a jungle, and the next moment she was dancing for the first time in her life and with the Sheriff of the county! The ecstasy that flooded her was so acute as to be a pain; pride was in it—Billings' Cora was showing the world!

THE sun was going down across the rolling slants, tinting their gold of dry-cured grass with a thousand elusive colors. At the foot of the long rise that went up to the log house Cora sat on Silver King and her long blue eyes clung to the cool grey or of the man beside her. They were the adoring of the shepherd at its master's feet, the wondering eyes of youth; potential woman's eyes, and they were beautiful as sin.

“Mister Sheriff,” she said “I wouldn't be afraid of you now—not even if I was wicked as hell.”

“Mammy,” she told her mother the next morning, “there won't be nothing better in the Land of Rest—there couldn't be.”

But her father was in an ugly mood. “Hear you went to Rodeo?” he asked, reaching for his morning biscuit.

“Did so,” said Cora defiantly.

“An' did I hear say you danced with that there blaggard, Masters?”

“Did so,” said the girl again, flaring up, “an' who calls him that tells lies.”

Chet Billings pointed trembling finger at her.

“Goin' agin yore own blood, that's what you be! Ongratelful brat!”

“There, Chet! There—” said Nance, mollifying as usual.

“He's good!” cried Cora, her voice shaking, “an' kind! He danced with me—in my ol' ridin' dress—before th' whole of Star Valley assembled! He made th' race-horse men let me alone when I beat 'em—an' he brought me four ice cream cones! Which same I ain't had sence that there Fourth o' July—”

“Never-less, missy, he's th' Sheriff an' my borned enemy—an' so be I ketch you with him agin I'll tan yore hide!”

But the slow-witted Chet did not catch his daughter, nor know what was in her wild young heart.

Not even Sheriff Masters himself knew what he had done by a day's kindness to a ragged waif of the foothills.

But Billings' Cora knew what had befallen her as instinctively as wild things know when Spring has come: The flags and music, the running of the Silver King, the heady excitement of the merry-making, would not alone have lifted her to Seventh Heaven that enchanted day. There went with her everywhere the kind grey eyes of the steady man near her own—or lifted above her on the blue roan—or—near again—the touch of a big hand closed about her own—the shine of a silver star, the creak and smell of shiny leather trapping So she sailed across the lonely slants on the King and lay for hours in the gulch beside the spring, dreaming dreams that were too fine for words.

The next time she met the Sheriff was beside the high wire fence which surrounded the Peters' land, and the next was over on the ragged edge of the south pine woods. Each time she flushed and trembled under his smiling gaze, but spoke to him haughtily. Once she became a gifted coquette and slid off the King, pretending to look for a mounting place, so that the man must lift her up again astride the bare white rock. She was a slight thing, he noted, thin and wispy, with the long bones of her close under the lean young flesh.

“Cora,” he said abruptly, “tell me—do you have plenty to eat at your house?”

She blushed red as a June morning. “Say, Mister,” she said with gravity, “we just have so much that Mammy feeds th' scraps to th' dogs.”

He held her a moment, studying her peaked small face, and the heart inside her thumped so hard she had to swallow twice. She did not need to help herself, but, again instinctively, her arms went round his neck where the blue flannel shirt-collar was buttoned so trimly, and the Sheriff had to lift a mighty listless weight. He was telling her that a race-horse man from Bellow was enquiring for the King with a view to purchase, but Cora did not hear.

“Your eyes are just th' color of Mammy's gray alpaca dress;” she said profoundly. And then she became conscious of the last of his words. “Sell the King?” she cried, straightening up like a young Indian, “you tell that there man to to straight—Why, there ain't nothin' in this world could get him from me! Not nothin'!”

But Billings' Cora did not know the human heart with its strange and pitiable inhibitions, its and unwritten commandments.

The summer drowsed away. Chet Billings gambled twice a week now at the Corners store, and his wife, starved and bitter in her bare log house, sat through the lonely days in terrible idleness. Cora was her only comfort and she would not stop the girl from her riding, since it was her all of youthful pleasure. And then, out of a clear sky, out of the lethargy of useless peace, there fell the bolt of change, utter and irrevocable.

It was late afternoon of a golden day, warm with sun, and windless. Billings' Cora lay on her back in the shade of a singing pine with Silver King drowsing above her. She was out of her domain, on the Peters' land, having come far around by the new wire gate, and just beyond her ran the country road on the edge of the little cliff that rimmed the lower land. It was hidden from view by the fringing young scrub-pines, a safe spot for dreaming her dreams. Into them presently came the far hum of a motor car. Just above her hiding place it slowed and stopped; then there was the stroke of hoofs in the dust

“Hello, Tom,” said a man's voice, “I've just come from th' Billings' place. It's him, all right. If you go up there quick you'll catch him with th' goods—look up th' gulch back th' house.” There was a long silence. Then the Sheriff's voice, strangely grave and reluctant. “All right, Pete. And I thank you for the tip. I'll have to go.”

The girl in the shade of the pine tree lay still as the dead for a shocked and dreadful moment. She must be dying, sure! And then something snapped in her like a strained wire and she was up, her hands clawing at the King's white man her bare toes gripping at his foreleg. In one more second white bolt shot from the pine trees, lay out across the levels, headed for the log house high on the hill skirts

The county road came down from the little cliff and ran away on the rolling slants in a great half moon, circling the Peters' place and turning at last down to the far valley, losing itself to this lonely neck of the woods. But around the corner of the Peters' fence a by-road turned, a pale ghost of a road in the dry grass, trodden only by Chet Billings' sorry team and democrat. This wide half circle was all in view and so was the broad space which it bounded.

And so it came about that Sheriff Masters, frowning and oddly disturbed at the turn events had taken—a turn which he had long dreaded, looked to the left across his shoulder. What caused him to do so he could not have said, but something drew his eyes that way. What he saw was beautiful. It shook even his law-calloused nerves. Long, low, level, his great tail streaming, his splendid head outstretched the Silver King lay down to earth and ran. The blur beneath his shining body was his wonderful legs, reaching and doubling, reaching and doubling. And the little dark thing that lay along his back flat as that back itself was Billings' Cora without a doubt. They were headed for the log house on the Billings' holding, as a crow flies, and they were doing the best there was in them. For a moment the Sheriff forgot to drive on. Then he flung a sharp glance backward, calculating.

The other end of the bee-line was the sheltered cliff below the road! The spot where he had met his deputy! The quiet mouth closed in its accustomed line and Sheriff Masters stepped on the gas. Down to the end of the Peters' place he went at wild speed and skidded in a half circle, turning. The white streak was eating up the open. He settled into the pale by-road but here he must slow down a bit owing to its roughness. Would the girl beat him, he wondered? Was it possible? She was sure gaining time—it looked a lot like she would!—And then the man behind the steering wheel stiffened, actually flinging his body back against the cushions in the shock of realization. The fence! The new wire fence around the Peters' place! A wire fence! And horse and riders were going straight for it, blind as a bat! Sheriff Masters shouted at the top of his voice, then groaned aloud. If it was a board fence, no matter how high—but this thing was thin, invisible, a snare, a web of wire stretching across their path—a thing to send them both tumbling to their death!

He shot his throttle wide open, and clinging to his bounding car drove by instinct, his eyes on the glorious pair. Silver King was not ten yards from the fence—going like the wind! He did not slacken pace—he did not see the danger. Once more the man groaned. Then his breath failed him altogether, he sank weakly against the wheel. It was over. He had seen the white horse, thundering up to the brink of destruction, rise in the air like a white plumed arrow and sail in a beautiful arc across the wire fence! Had seen him land on his feet, running, and shot straight ahead to disappear among the pine trees which marched down from the Billings' cabin—Gallant Silver King! Keen-eyed, fearless, faithful: the one grand possession of the sorry family had proved his fealty! Brave little rider, true to her blood!

The Sheriff stopped and wiped the cold sweat from his face, and at the trembling of his hand a certain knowledge came to him. If Silver King had not seen and taken the hazard of the fence—if the little flat figure in the ragged overalls had gone down in a jumble of flying hoofs the glory of his silver star would have been done-for, life itself would have been done-for, with all its hope of happiness.

It was a full hour later that Sheriff Masters drove up to the Billings' cabin. On the door-sill a woman sat, a weary-eyed woman in faded calico, with her hand on the shoulder of a thin wisp of a girl who rocked back and forth on her knees, weeping as if her heart were broken.

The man came forward, his face a trifle grey, his eyes on the woman's face, questioning. “Billings?” he said, moistening his lips.

The woman nodded across her shoulder. “Gone,” she said succinctly, “for Texas, I guess. Ain't any use to follow him, Sheriff. He's got the King—and in them hills....”

“I'm sorry—I did not mean so serious a thing as this—only to stop him from..”

“I'm not sorry,” said Nance Billings savagely, “he was making hard liquor to sell at the Corners store—and his wife and daughter have been outcasts for fifteen years! I'm glad!”

Sheriff Masters stooped and lifted the weeping girl in his strong arms. He held her hard against his heart, put his lips against her ragged, wind-tossed hair. “Cora,” he said gravely, “little Cora—I never dreamed you loved the old man so—I'm sorry—”

Billings' Cora raised her tear-wet face. The long blue eyes were beautiful as stars through rain. “Him?” she panted scornfully, “my dad? Him? Huh! But oh, I'll never see th' Silver King again—not never, so long as I live!” And the quivering young face went down on the Sheriff's breast while the wails redoubled.

For a long time the man stood, silent and wondering, stroking the rough black head. The heart of a woman, of even a woman-child was beyond him. Presently he looked at the mother.

“There's better for you both than this,” he said. Nance Billings nodded. Then the man raised the girl's face to his.

“Cora,” he said gently, “do you think you could love an old man like me? Could you marry him?”

Billings' Cora frankly wiped her streaked face on her sleeve.

“I ain't done nothin' else but love you,” she gulped, “from th' very first time I set eyes on you, Mister. No man ain't ever kissed me—an' if—if you—it would help me to think of somethin' else beside th' King.”

She raised trembling lips, soft and sweet as a dew-wet rose, and Nance Billings turned back into the empty cabin.