CHAPTER I
THE ADVENTURE IN THE COULIE

The report of a bird gun made the single rider in sight upon the short-grassed plain pull in her pinto and gaze westerly toward the setting sun, now going down in a field of golden glory.

The pinto stood like a statue, and its rider seemed a part of the steed, so well did she sit in her saddle. She gazed steadily under her hand–gazed and listened.

Finally, she murmured: “That’s the snarl of a lion–sure. Get up, Molly!”

The pinto sprang forward. There was a deep coulie ahead, with a low range of grass-covered hills beyond. Through those hills the lions often came down onto the grazing plains. It was behind these hills that the sun was going down, for the hour was early.

As she rode, the girl loosened the gun she carried in the holster slung at her hip. On her saddle horn was coiled a hair rope.

She was dressed in olive green–her blouse, open at the throat, divided skirts, leggings, and broad-brimmed hat of one hue. Two thick plaits of sunburned brown hair hung over her shoulders, and to her waist. Her grey eyes were keen and rather solemn. Although the girl on the pinto could not have been far from sixteen, her face seemed to express a serious mind.

The scream of that bane of the cattlemen–the mountain lion–rang out from the coulie again. The girl clapped her tiny spurs against the pinto’s flanks, and that little animal doubled her pace. In a minute they were at the head of the slope and the girl could see down into the coulie, where low mesquite shrubs masked the bottom and the little spring that bubbled there.

Something was going on down in the coulie. The bushes waved; something rose and fell in their midst like a flail. There was a voice other than that of the raucous tones of the lion, and which squalled almost as loudly!

A little to one side of the shrubs stood a quivering grey pony, its ears pointed toward the rumpus in the shrubs, blowing and snorting. The rider of that empty saddle was plainly in trouble with the snarling lion.

The cattlemen of the Panhandle looked upon the lion as they did upon the coyote–save that the former did more damage to the herds. Roping the lion, or shooting it with the pistol, was a general sport. But caught in a corner, the beast–unlike the coyote–would fight desperately. Whoever had attacked this one had taken on a larger contract than he could handle. That was plain.

Urged by the girl the pinto went down the slope of the hollow on a keen run. At the bottom she snorted and swerved from the mesquite clump. The smell of the lion was strong in Molly’s nostrils.

“Stand still, Molly!” commanded the girl, and was out of the saddle with an ease that seemed phenomenal. She ran straight toward the thrashing bushes, pistol in hand.

The lion leaped, and the person who had been beating it off with the shotgun was borne down under the attack. Once those sabre-sharp claws got to work, the victim of the lion’s charge would be viciously torn.

The girl saw the gun fly out of his hands. The lion was too close upon its prey for her to use the pistol. She slipped the weapon back into its holster and picked up the shotgun. Plunging through the bushes she swung the gun and knocked the beast aside from its prey. The blow showed the power in her young arms and shoulders. The lion rolled over and over, half stunned.

“Quick!” she advised the victim of the lion’s attack. “He’ll be back at us.”

Indeed, scarcely had she spoken when the brute scrambled to its feet. The girl shouldered the gun and pulled the other trigger as the beast leaped.

There was no report. Either there was no shell in that barrel, or something had fouled the trigger. The lion, all four paws spread, and each claw displayed, sailed through the air like a bat, or a flying squirrel. Its jaws were wide open, its teeth bared, and the screech it emitted was, in truth, a terrifying sound.

The girl realized that the original victim of the lion’s attack was scrambling to his feet. She dropped to her knee and kept the muzzle of the gun pointed directly for the beast’s breast. The empty gun was her only defense in that perilous moment.

“Grab my gun! Here in the holster!” she panted.

The lion struck against the muzzle of the shotgun, and the girl–in spite of the braced position she had taken–was thrown backward to the ground. As she fell the pistol was drawn from its holster.

The empty shotgun had saved her from coming into the embrace of the angry lion, for while she fell one way, the animal went another. Then came three shots in rapid succession.

She scrambled to her feet, half laughing, and dusting the palms of her gantlets. The lion was lying a dozen yards away, while the victim of its attack stood near, the blue smoke curling from the revolver.

“My goodness!”

After the excitement was all over that exclamation from the girl seemed unnecessary. But the fact that startled her was, that it was not a man at all to whose aid she had come. He was a youth little older than herself.

“I say!” this young man exclaimed. “That was plucky of you, Miss–awfully plucky, don’t you know! That creature would have torn me badly in another minute.”

The girl nodded, but seemed suddenly dumb. She was watching the youth keenly from under the longest, silkiest lashes, it seemed to Pratt Sanderson, he had ever seen.

“I hope you’re not hurt?” he said, shyly, extending the pistol toward the girl. She stood with her hands upon her hips, panting a little, and with plenty of color in her brown cheeks.

“How about you?” she asked, shortly.

It was true the young man appeared much the worse for the encounter. In the first place, he stood upon one foot, a good deal like a crane, for his left ankle had twisted when he fell. His left arm, too, was wrenched, and he felt a tingling sensation all through the member, from the shoulder to the tips of his fingers.

Beside, his sleeve was ripped its entire length, and the lion’s claws had cut deep into his arm. The breast of his shirt was in strips.

“I say! I’m hurt, worse than I thought, eh?” he said, a little uncertainly. He wavered a moment on his sound foot, and then sank slowly to the grass.

“Wait! Don’t let yourself go!” exclaimed the girl, getting into quick action. “It isn’t so bad.”

She ran for the leather water-bottle that hung from her saddle. Molly had stood through the trouble without moving. Now the girl filled the bottle at the spring.

Pratt Sanderson was lying back on his elbows, and the white lids were lowered over his black eyes.

The treatment the range girl gave him was rather rough, but extremely efficacious. She dashed half the contents of the bottle into his face, and he sat up, gasping and choking. She tore away his tattered shirt in a most matter-of-fact manner and began to bathe the scratches on his chest with her kerchief (quickly unknotted from around her throat), which she had saturated with water. Fortunately, the wounds were not very deep, after all.

“You–you must think me a silly sort of chap,” he gasped. “Foolish to keel over like this – ”

“You haven’t been used to seeing blood,” the girl observed. “That makes a difference. I’ve been binding up the boys’ cuts and bruises all my life. Never was such a place as the old Bar-T for folks getting hurt.”

“Bar-T?” ejaculated the young man, with sudden interest. “Then you must be Miss Rugley, Captain Dan Rugley’s daughter?”

“Yes, sir,” said the girl, quietly. “Captain Rugley is my father.”

“And you’re going to put on that very clever spectacle at the Jackleg schoolhouse next month? I’ve heard all about it–and what you have done toward making it what Bill Edwards calls a howling success. I’m stopping with Bill. Mrs. Edwards is my mother’s friend, and I’m the advance guard of a lot of Amarillo people who are coming out to the Edwardses just to see your ‘Pageant of the Panhandle.’ Bill and his wife are no end enthusiastic about it.”

The deeper color had gradually faded out of the girl’s cheeks. She was cool enough now; but she kept her eyes lowered, just the same. He would have liked to see their expression once more. There had been a startled look in their grey depths when first she glanced at him.

“I am afraid they make too much of my part in the affair,” said she, quietly. “I am only one of the committee – ”

“But they say you wrote it all,” the young fellow interposed, eagerly.

“Oh–that! It happened to be easy for me to do so. I have always been deeply interested in the Panhandle–‘The Great American Desert’ as the old geographies used to call all this great Middle West, of Kansas, Nebraska, the Indian Territory, and Upper Texas.

“My father crossed it among the first white men from the Eastern States. He came back here to settle–long before I was born, of course–when a plow had never been sunk in these range lands. He belongs to the old cattle régime. He wouldn’t hear until lately of putting wheat into any of the Bar-T acres.”

“Ah, well, by all accounts he is one of the few men who still know how to make money out of cows,” laughed Pratt Sanderson. “Thank you, Miss Rugley. I can’t let you do anything more for me – ”

“You are a long way from the Edwards’ place,” she said. “You’d better ride to the Bar-T for the night. We will send a boy over there with a message, if you think Mrs. Edwards will be worried.”

“I suppose I’d better do as you say,” he said, rather ruefully. “Mrs. Edwards will be worried about my absence over supper time. She says I’m such a tenderfoot.”

For a moment a twinkle came into the veiled grey eyes; the new expression illumined the girl’s face like a flash of sunlight across the shadowed field.

“You rather back up her opinion when you tackle a lion with nothing but birdshot–and one barrel of your gun fouled in the bargain,” she said. “Don’t you think so?”

“But I killed it with a revolver!” exclaimed the young fellow, struggling to his feet again.

“That pistol throws a good-sized bullet,” said the ranchman’s daughter, smiling. “But I’d never think of picking a quarrel with a lion unless I had a good rope, or something that threw heavier lead than birdshot.”

He looked at her, standing there in the after-glow of the sunset, with honest admiration in his eyes.

“I am a tenderfoot, I guess,” he admitted. “And you were not scared for a single moment!”

“Oh, yes, I was,” and Frances Rugley’s laugh was low and musical. “But it was all over so quickly that the scare didn’t have a chance to show. Come on! I’ll catch your pony, and we’ll make the Bar-T before supper time.”