All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 103: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A MIDNIGHT OF tural plains-born caution came to the sur- face. It would never do for her, she knew, to ride boldly to the place, where such as she had no business to be. She twitched the good little pony off the trail and struck off across country. Far out back of the aguardiente shack she rode, apparently in aimless ramblings. Twice or thrice she dismounted to pick some prairie flowers and make of them a gay wisp for her belt and hatband. This as such a plausible excuse for her riding thus that it would divert the attention of any chance observer, she thought. Letting the pony amble without an ap- parent purpose, but really adroitly drifting him to a position behind the Chaparral Cock, she began to work back toward the trail, hoping to pass near enough to see the Mexican woman through door or win- dow or in the open, about the joint. For her personal safety so far as the Mexicans were concerned she had no fears. In those. days and times the Mexican who lifted up unbidden eyes to a daughter of the soil ceased to exist, and under the aegis of that stern code the girls of Texas rode far and wide, unafraid, unless of the few wolves of their own race who are apt to appear in all ranks and walks of human society in cities or in wildernesses—throwbacks from the norm of male chivalry. The land was more rolling than common out there, and there was a spring, small but well known locally, where Berenice was counting on getting water for herself and the pony. Berenice descried the hackber- ries about the spring just as the earliest dusk was coming. The pony, sniffing the water afar, began to prance. She let him have his way and soon was drawing closer to the spring that was in the bottom of an - otherwise dry draw between two high rolls of prairie. She left the pony to his own devices after she had alighted, drank herself, and re- mounted. The rein was slack, and the pony fussed with the water after he was replete. Deep in meditations tinged with unpleas- antness, Berenice was thrilled of a sudden to hear, seemingly afar but oddly near, the rumble of a deep-toned whicker. The pony answered. THE RANGES. 93 Again she heard it—that deep-toned whicker. There could be but one such! But where was the animal that had made the sound? She was beginning to gaze about, to twitch the pony away, that she might begin ‘a tour of exploration, when she saw, afar, a man approaching. She saw it was a Mexican—knew him for Aguilar, the Chaparral Cock’s familiar spirit of evil. In the absence of secure knowledge of the exact whereabouts of the stallion, if indeed it were Midnight that she had heard and not some other horse near the Chapar- ral Cock, Berenice decided quickly to as- sume indifferencc. She forced the pony slowly about, as if she were just on the point of leaving because her mount had finished his drink, and rode toward Aguilar easily, naturally. She passed the sleepy- eyed Mexican, who gave her a deferential bow in response to her distant nod, and rode toward the main trail with just the right degree of languor. Altogether, to Aguilar’s mind, she was just one who had turned aside to get water for herself and horse. After she had passed and he had hast- ened to the concealed stable in the middle of the hackberry clump, in the swell of the dry draw’s side, where Midnight was hid- den, Aguilar found the ventilating hole that did service for window partly ajar. But he attached no importance to that, as the girl’s acting had been so perfect that it would have taken a keener man than Aguilar to discover its ultimate purpose, even had he sensed it in the least. But Berenice, breathing more freely, set the little pony along the path down which Aguilar had come toward the spring. It would take her close to the Chaparral Cock —just what she desired. Approaching the place, she reined in the pony and spoke soothing words. The little fellow slowed easily, his hoofs making scarcely a sound on the soft grass beside the path onto which she twitched him with intent purpose to deaden the sound of his feet. Opposite that window of the Chaparral Cock that lighted the bar the girl stopped the pony and gazed through the aperture, COmiIclooOo SS C©