Pete's Girl

: The Fighting Edge

She stood in the doorway, a patched and ragged Cinderella of the desert.

Upon her slim, ill-poised figure the descending sun slanted a shaft of

glory. It caught in a spotlight the cheap, dingy gown, the coarse

stockings through the holes of which white flesh peeped, the heavy,

broken brogans that disfigured the feet. It beat upon a small head with a

mass of black, wild-flying hair, on red lips curved with discontent, into

/> dark eyes passionate and resentful at what fate had made of her young

life. A silent, sullen lass, one might have guessed, and the judgment

would have been true as most first impressions.



The girl watched her father drive half a dozen dogies into the mountain

corral perched precariously on the hillside. Soon now it would be dusk.

She went back into the cabin and began to prepare supper.



In the rickety stove she made a fire of cottonwood. There was a

business-like efficiency in the way she peeled potatoes, prepared the

venison for the frying-pan, and mixed the biscuit dough.



June Tolliver and her father lived alone on Piceance[1] Creek. Their

nearest neighbor was a trapper on Eighteen-Mile Hill. From one month's

end to another she did not see a woman. The still repression in the

girl's face was due not wholly to loneliness. She lived on the edge of a



secret she intuitively felt was shameful. It colored her thoughts and

feelings, set her apart from the rest of the world. Her physical

reactions were dominated by it. Yet what this secret was she could only

guess at.



A knock sounded on the door.



June brushed back a rebellious lock of hair from her eyes with the wrist

above a flour-whitened hand. "Come in."



A big dark man stood on the threshold. His glance swept the girl,

searched the room, and came back to her.



"Pete Tolliver live here?"



"Yes. He's lookin' after the stock. Be in soon, likely."



The man closed the door. June dragged a chair from a corner and returned

to her cooking.



From his seat the man watched her. His regard was disturbing. It had a

quality of insistence. His eyes were cold yet devouring. They were

possessive, not clear but opaque. They did not look at her as other eyes

did. She felt the blood burning in her cheeks.



Presently, as she passed from the table to the stove to look at the

sputtering venison, she flashed a resentful glance at him. It did not

touch his effrontery.



"You Pete's girl?" he asked.



"Yes."



"You've grown. Knew you when you was learnin' to crawl."



"In Brown's Park?" The words were out before she could stop them.



"You done said it." He smiled, not pleasantly, she thought. "I'm a real

old friend of yore father."



Curiosity touched with apprehension began to stir in her. For those early

years she had only memory to rely upon. Tolliver never referred to them.

On that subject the barriers were up between the two. Fugitive flashes of

that first home came back to June. She remembered a sweet, dark-eyed

woman nuzzling her little body with kisses after the bath, an hour when

that mother wept as though her heart would break and she had put little

baby arms in tight embrace round her neck by way of comfort. That dear

woman was not in any of the later pictures. A pile of stones on a

hillside in Brown's Park marked the grave.



Between the day of 'Lindy Tolliver's outburst of grief and the child's

next recollection was a gap. The setting of the succeeding memories was a

frame house on a dusty road at the edge of a frontier town. In front of

it jolted big freight wagons, three of them fastened together and drawn

by a double row of oxen so long she could not count them. The place was

Rawlins, Wyoming, and it was an outfitting point for a back country in

Colorado hundreds of miles from the railroad. The chief figure in June's

horizon was a stern-eyed, angular aunt who took the place of both father

and mother and did her duty implacably. The two lived together forever,

it seemed to the child.



June wakened one night from the light of a lamp in her aunt's hand. A man

was standing beside her. He was gaunt and pallid, in his eyes a look of

hunger that reminded her of a hunted coyote. When he took her tightly in

his arms she began to cry. He had murmured, "My li'l' baby, don't you be

scared of yore paw." As mysteriously as he had come to life, so Pete

Tolliver disappeared again.



Afterward there was a journey with a freight outfit which lasted days and

days. June was in charge of a bullwhacker. All she remembered about him

was that he had been kind to her and had expended a crackling vocabulary

on his oxen. The end of the trek brought her to Piceance Creek and a

father now heavily bearded and with long, unkempt hair. They had lived

here ever since.



Did this big man by the window belong to her father's covered past? Was

there menace in his coming? Vaguely June felt that there was.



The door opened and Tolliver stepped in. He was rather under middle-size,

dressed in down-at-the-heel boots, butternut jeans, cotton shirt, and

dusty, ragged slouch hat. The grizzled beard hid the weak mouth, but the

skim-milk eyes, the expression of the small-featured face, betrayed the

man's lack of force. You may meet ten thousand like him west of the

Mississippi. He lives in every village, up every creek, in every valley,

and always he is the cat's-paw of stronger men who use him for good or

ill to serve their ends.



The nester stopped in his tracks. It was impossible for June to miss the

dismay that found outlet in the fallen jaw and startled eyes.



In the stranger's grin was triumphant malice. "You sure look glad to see

me, Pete, and us such old friends too. Le's see, I ain't seen you

since--since--" He stopped, as though his memory were at fault, but June

sensed the hint of a threat in the uncompleted sentence.



Reluctantly Tolliver took the offered hand. His consternation seemed to

have stricken him dumb.



"Ain't you going to introduce yore old pal to the girl?" the big man

asked.



Not willingly, the rancher found the necessary words. "June, meet Mr.

Houck."



June was putting the biscuits in the oven. She nodded an acknowledgment

of the introduction. Back of the resentful eyes the girl's brain was

busy.



"Old side pardners, ain't we, Pete?" Houck was jeering at him almost

openly.



The older man mumbled what might be taken for an assent.



"Branded a heap of cattle, you 'n' me. Eh, Pete?" The stranger settled

deeper in the chair. "Jake Houck an' you could talk over old times all

night. We was frolicsome colts."



Tolliver felt his hand forced. "Put off yore hat and wash up, Jake.

You'll stay to-night, o' course."



"Don't mind if I do. I'm headed for Glenwood. Reckon I'd better put the

horse up first."



The two men left the cabin. When they returned half an hour later, the

supper was on the table. June sat on the side nearest the stove and

supplied the needs of the men. Coffee, hot biscuits, more venison, a

second dish of gravy: no trained waiter could have anticipated their

wants any better. If she was a bit sulky, she had reason for it. Houck's

gaze followed her like a searchlight. It noted the dark good looks of her

tousled head, the slimness of the figure which moved so awkwardly, a

certain flash of spirit in the undisciplined young face.



"How old's yore girl?" the man asked his host.



Tolliver hesitated, trying to remember. "How old are you, June?"



"Going on sixteen," she answered, eyes smouldering angrily.



This man's cool, impudent appraisal of her was hateful, she felt.



He laughed at her manner, easily, insolently, for he was of the type that

finds pleasure in the umbrage of women annoyed by his effrontery. Of the

three the guest was the only one quite at his ease. Tolliver's

ingratiating jokes and the heartiness of his voice rang false. He was

troubled, uncertain how to face the situation that had arisen.



His daughter reflected this constraint. Why did her father fear this big

dominating fellow? What was the relation between them? Why did his very

presence bring with it a message of alarm?



She left them before the stove as soon as the dishes were washed,

retiring to the bedroom at the other end of the log cabin. Far into the

night she heard them talking, in low voices that made an indistinct

murmur. To the sound of them she fell asleep.



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[1] Pronounced Pee-ance.



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