YUMA

It was midafternoon before Penelope returned to the clearing in the woods. She had found some difficulty in slipping unobserved into the storeroom on the ranch to secure the things that now reposed in saddlebags. While in the Basin the girl had made sure that Mort Cavendish would be occupied with the supervision of branding a lot of new cattle. He could hardly get back home before dark. This would give Penny ample time to make her call on Becky and be with her when Mort came in.

When Penny turned the supplies over to Tonto, she saw the gratitude in the Indian's eyes. "It was almost as if the food were going to save his life," she later thought. The truth of the matter was that the food was to save a life that was more important to the Indian than his own could possibly be.

While in the clearing Penny tried to learn more about the trail, but Tonto either would not or could not inform her regarding its origin. She tried again to make friends with the horse called "Silver," but her overtures were rejected. Silver remained aloof. Las Vegas stood by, and Penny had the impression that he was laughing at her rebuff by Silver in whatever way a mustang had of laughing. It irked her.

"I'll come back," she said to Silver, "and bring some sugar and oats that'll make you beg to be friends."

She mounted Las Vegas and rode away, little realizing the grim sequence of events that was to be started simply because she decided to take sugar to a stallion, or the appalling episode that portended in the Basin.

Penny reached the Basin and rode directly to the ranch house. As she rounded the corner and came into view of the porch, she saw, first of all, big, stockinged feet resting on the railing, then long legs, and then the sleepy-looking face of Cousin Jeb.

Jeb was looked upon by everyone as worthless. Details of work about the ranch were mysteries he'd never tried to fathom, and he helped best by keeping out of people's way. While Penny had no respect for Jeb, she disliked him far less than she did her other cousins, Jeb's three brothers.

She had thought several times that Jeb was not nearly so simple as he was thought to be. He had a lot of idle time and he spent it all in thinking. Sometimes the results of his periods of concentration were surprisingly astute.

The girl dismounted near the steps and slapped Las Vegas in the proper place. "Get going," she said, her respect for the mustang lessened after seeing the silver stallion. Las Vegas scampered toward the corral while Penny mounted the porch and perched on the railing.

"What's new, Jeb?" she greeted her cousin.

Jeb looked at the girl with eyes that were watery and weak. "Nothin' much, I guess," he replied without breaking the rhythm of his long-jawed chewing of a match.

He stared off at the distant Gap. "Got some more thinkin' tuh do before I come tuh any conclusions. So far, I'd say they hain't nothin' much that's new."

He let his tilted-back chair drop to its normal four-legged position. He slipped his feet into heavy lace-up shoes that had no laces, and pushed himself by the arms of the chair to his feet. Standing erect, Jeb Cavendish would have been uncommonly tall. Even in his slouching posture he was well over six feet two inches. His growin' all went one way, he explained from time to time, and it was true. The same poundage would have made a normal man of five feet eight. Jeb was that lean.

"Lot o' thinkin' tuh git done," he repeated musingly, as he pushed his tapering hands deep into the pockets of faded dungarees that ended halfway between his knees and shoe-tops. Penny waited, knowing that Jeb would have more to say if given sufficient time. Jeb spat through teeth that were large and horsy. Then he took off a battered hat that was ventilated with several holes, and scratched the naked part of his head that was constantly widening with the ebbing of his thin, sandy-colored hair.

"Yuh know, Penelope," he said at length, "it's writ' in Scripture that the Lord tempers the wind tuh the shorn lamb."

So Jeb was in one of the Scripture-quoting moods.

"What about it?" asked Penny. "I've heard of that, and I've always thought that if the lamb hadn't been shorn, the wind wouldn't have had to be tempered."

Jeb looked at the girl reprovingly and went on. "Mebbe, reasonin' along them same lines, it's the Lord's will tuh blind Uncle Bryant so's he can't see what goes on around here."

"Meaning what?" asked Penny quickly.

"Meanin' it'd save Bryant a powerful lot of mental sufferin' an' bloody sweat if he didn't see too much."

Penny rose and faced her cousin directly. "Jeb," she said, "is it true that Uncle Bryant's eyes are going back on him?"

"Dunno."

"But you think they are?"

"Bryant's never complained about his sight."

"Why do you think he's losing it?"

Jeb answered with another question. "Have yuh seen him readin' of late?"

Penny hadn't and she said so. "But he never did spend much time reading, so you can't tell anything by that."

"Yuh seen the God-defyin' sort o' men that's come tuh work here?"

Penny nodded. "I don't like their looks at all."

"Jest so. Neither would Bryant. He's left the hirin' of new hands tuh Mort an' Vince. If he'd seen Rangoon, an' Sawtell, an' some o' the rest, he'd shoot 'em on general principles in the same way a man'd step on a pizon-bad, murder-spider. Those men've been here; Bryant's had chances tuh see 'em an' done nothin'." Having delivered himself of this, Jeb resumed his chair and slipped his feet out of the shoes again. "Take's more thinkin'," he finished, letting his eyes return to far-off places.

Penny gripped her cousin's arm. "Look here, Jeb," she said, "I want to know more about things in the Basin. Everyone has been so darned quiet, and so strained-acting, that it almost seems as if the place is filled with ... with ghosts or something. What's it all about?"

Jeb fixed his pale eyes on the girl. They seemed to cover themselves with a veil. He leaned forward and spoke in a soft confidential voice.

"Cousin, t'others around here think I'm tetched in the head. None of 'em listens tuh me but you. They don't figger me worth listenin' to, but I ain't sleepin'. I see things, I think things out. I dunno what it is, I can't put my finger on't, but they's ugly happenin's in this here Basin. They'll be some killin' here."

Jeb's voice took on a quality that chilled Penelope more than the rain that had but recently stopped falling. There was something almost sepulchral about the way he spoke. He seemed to be foretelling events with an authority that could not be doubted.

"Things can't boil underneath without breakin' out soon. Murder is comin' an' that won't be all. And I'll tell yuh some more." His voice fell to a hoarse whisper. "Uncle Bryant is gettin' ready tuh die."

Penelope broke in. "But that's—"

Jeb stopped the girl. "It's true. Don't ask fer no more. Bryant is makin' ready. I know it, he's makin' ready tuh die."

Penny knew that she'd gain nothing by pressing Jeb for further information at that time. She also knew that it was time for her to go to Rebecca. She crossed the porch and entered the house, to find another cousin sprawling in the living room. The mere fact that Wallie was there in his overdressed glory was substantial evidence that Bryant was not around. Bryant hated Wallie chiefly for his clothes, secondarily for his indolent love of social life and the girls in the nearest town. Wallie was experimenting with a guitar, doubtless practicing some new tune to play in his part of Don Juan. His shirt and the tightly wound neckerchief on his fat neck were of the finest silk and of brilliant hue. His trousers were of high-priced fawnskin, and his boots, as usual, gleamed like mirrors. He had practiced long to strum the strings of his guitar in the manner that would best bring out the sparkle of the imitation diamond on one of ten fat fingers.

He wore two guns, but wouldn't have had the nerve to use them. The guns were hypocrisy, the ring an imitation. The two were symbolic of the man who wore them—an "imitation," and a hypocrite.

Penny walked past without speaking, and entered the kitchen where old Gimlet was cooking supper. His one good eye, set in a round and wrinkled face, was like the currant in a hot cross bun. The one eye that gave the man his nickname was sharp and penetrating, but now it lighted with pleasure at the sight of the girl.

"Keee-ripes," exclaimed Gimlet, "I'm glad tuh see yuh back, Miss Penny. I shore as hell—pardon the cussin'—I shore worry when yuh ain't around."

Penny smiled. "I just wanted to tell you that I won't be here for supper. I'm going over to Becky's place."

Gimlet frowned. "If I'd o' knowed that I'd o' taken a lot less trouble in fixin' good eatin' steaks."

The girl exchanged a few more words with the cook, then left by the rear door. At the corral, which lay between her home and Rebecca's, she saw Yuma working on Las Vegas.

Yuma was the only new employee in the Basin that Penny could look at without an instinctive feeling of revulsion. Yuma was working a brush vigorously over the hide of the mustang when Penny approached. She had heard a few rumors about the big, pleasant-faced cowpuncher, with shoulders so big and broad that they seemed to droop of their own weight.

It had been said by expert judges of good fighters that a blow from Yuma's fist would drop a bull. He had once been locked in the back room of a saloon with four men in what was to be a fight to the finish—Yuma's finish, supposedly. A short time later his fists crashed through the panels of a locked door and a mighty demon of a man walked out. His clothing was in shreds. Inside the room, debris and wreckage were everywhere, and four men were prostrate on the floor.

"You needn't rub the hide off him," said Penny as she came near. Yuma looked up and grew red in the face. Before the pretty girl, the giant was flushed and bashful.

"Shore, ma'am, I'm right sorry. I—I had a little time on my hands an' seen yore hoss. Bein' as you warn't around, I figgered tuh clean the hoss up some."

"And if I'd been around," replied the girl in a teasing voice, "I suppose you'd have cleaned me up."

Yuma stared, mouth open. "Y-y-yew, g-g-gosh, Miss Penelope, I—er—uh...." He paused, completely at a loss.

Penny really enjoyed watching the young giant squirm in his embarrassment. She rested her elbows on a rail of the corral, and hooked the heel of one boot on a lower rail. Leaning back, she watched him for a moment, then said, "What's your name?"

"Folks jest sort o' call me 'Yuma'—that's where I come from, Yuma."

"But everyone has to have at least two names. Don't you have any other?"

"Most o' the gents I seen around this yere Basin lays claim tuh a couple o' names an' lies when they does so." Yuma straightened and looked directly at the girl with his clear blue eyes.

"That remark," she said, "calls for a little expanding. What do you mean?"

"Oh, 'tain't nothin' tuh take offense at," the blond man said slowly. "A lot o' gents in this country left their right names east of the Mississippi, but I'd sooner not use any name than tuh borrow one that might belong tuh some other gent."

Penny feigned a bit of anger. "Do you mean to imply that Cavendish isn't our right name?"

"Aw, shucks, ma'am—nothin' like that. I reckon you an' yore relatives has a right tuh the name, but they hain't many others on this spread that was born with the handle they're usin' right now."

"Go on, Yuma. This is interesting."

Yuma saw Rangoon crossing toward the bunkhouse from the saddle shed. "Thar," he said, "goes a gent that lays claim tuh the name o' Rangoon. Last time I seen him, he called himself Abe Larkin, but he made that name sort o' dangerous by usin' it when he shot up a couple homesteaders near Snake Flats."

"You mean he's a murderer?"

"That's what the law'd like tuh hang him fer bein' if they knowed where tuh reach him."

Yuma took a step closer to the girl, his thumb jerked over his shoulder in the general direction of the open grazing land. "Out thar brandin' cattle," he said, "they's a couple hombres that was in the hoss-tradin' business in Mexico last year. They sold hosses tuh some soldiers down thar. Only trouble with that was that they wasn't pertickler whar from the hosses came. When they got catched takin' some hossflesh from a gent named Turner, without payin' fer the same, they shot old Turner."

Penny knew from his manner that Yuma told the truth, but she nevertheless found it hard to believe him. "What are their names?" she asked.

"No one knows their real names, but they draw pay here under the names of Lombard an' Sawtell. As fer me, yuh c'n jest call me 'Yuma.'"

Penny grew serious. "Very well," she said, "I'll call you Yuma."

"I suppose it's right nervy o' me tuh make mention o' this next," said Yuma, "But, I—er—uh...."

"Perhaps," interrupted the girl, "if you think it nervy, you'd better not say it."

"Wal, I'm agoin' tuh jest the same. Now see here, Miss Penelope, I would sure like yuh tuh feel that if ever yuh want someone that yuh c'n count on tuh do somethin', no matter what it is, you'll call on me."

"But I hardly know you," said Penny—then, irrepressibly, "this is so sudden!"

Yuma's eyes dropped. Penny could have bitten her tongue. She had turned the sincerity of the man from Arizona aside with banter. She realized instantly that Yuma sensed the danger others had mentioned and wanted her to know where he stood.

"I'm right sorry," he apologized, "I should o' knowed better'n tuh try tuh suggest that a no-good saddle tramp like me could be of any good tuh a lady like you."

Penny laid a brown hand on the solid arm of Yuma. She felt the hard muscles trembling at her touch.

"Forgive me, Yuma," she said seriously, "I'm sorry. I want you to know that I do appreciate your offer and that you'll be the first one I'll call on if I need a friend."

Yuma looked startled. "Yuh—yuh mean t-t-tuh say ... that is, I mean—you—"

"My friends call me Penny." The girl stuck her right hand out, man-style. "What say, Yuma?—let's be friends."

Yuma hurriedly wiped his right hand on his shirt. He clasped Penny's hand as if it were a delicate thing that might break at a calloused touch. "G-gosh," he said.

Penny left and ran toward Becky's. Yuma watched the girl, who ran as gracefully as a fawn. He looked in awe at his hand, the hand that had touched the girl's slim fingers. Once more he muttered, "Gosh." He saw Las Vegas eyeing him. "Las Vegas," he said to the mustang, "me an' you are downright lucky critters, an' the only difference is that you ain't the brains tuh know it."