by Zane Grey
“You’re square now? You honestly don’t know?”
“So help me Heaven!” returned Burridge, raising his gloved right hand. “If I knew I’d tell you — even though the man was my pard. But I don’t know. I never met a man who did. Of course no one is goin’ to brag about that. The Pine Tree outfit is only three years old. It’s got a brand, but sure no one ever seen it on a steer or a calf. I never seen it on anythin’. I hear it’s cut on aspen trees. Sheepherders will tell you that.”
“Cedar Hatt might belong to it?” queried Lacy.
“Sure. But he’d be a bad hombre to trust, unless you had some hold on him. My idea of the Pine Tree outfit is this. Some slick rustler from other parts has ridden in here, either with a few choice men or picked them carefully after he got here, an’ he has the money an’ the brains to control a small outfit. Some cowboy found a stray steer on the range. It had its brand painted out. Painted! That’s new. But how the devil could they paint out the brands on a big bunch of wild steers?”
“Not very practical,” observed Jim, thoughtfully.
“It’s no trick to steal cattle in this country, an’ it’s a heap sight easier to sell them,” declared Burridge. “But to do it on a big scale an’ not be found out — I call that brains.”
“How far to the Hatt ranch?”
“Round this next bend. Wonderful place to hole up, don’t you think?”
“Shore is. Are all these canyons like this?”
“Like it? Yes, only rougher. Some of them are so thick you can’t get a hoss through.”
When they rode around a high green corner Jim gave vent to an exclamation of utmost pleasure. The brake opened into an oval valley surrounded by gray-cliffed, green-thicketed walls, rising high. A level meadow, where horses and cows grazed in deep grass, ended in a low bench of land, upon which huge isolated pines and spruces towered halfway to the rim. Two log cabins stood picturesquely at the edge of this rise of ground. In the background a corral and barn, with logs awry and roof caved in, showed half hidden in a blaze of golden aspens.
“Here’s where the Hatts hang out,” remarked Burridge. “It’s like a fox den, with two holes. The one we just came down, an’ a pass below where a couple of good shots could stave off all the cowboys in Arizona.”
“Beautiful!” ejaculated Jim, charmed out of his usual reserve.
“I’ve been here often. Once tried to buy the place from Hatt. Not much.”
“What do these Hatts live on?” queried Jim, gazing round.
“Meat an’ beans an’ corn meal. An’ they make their own whiskey. If you take a swill of that it’ll knock you flat.”
“How many women-folks?”
“Only the kid — Rose. There was a woman here, a while back, wife of one of the boys, I heard. But I never saw her. . . . Well, old sharp-eyed Elam sees us already. He’s comin’ out with a gun.”
The riders in advance drove the pack horses up on the bench, and followed to dismount. Burridge, arrived a little in advance of Jim. The old mountaineer, Hatt, stood shaggy-headed, with a smile of welcome on his craggy face.
“Howdy, Elam! Did you get word I was comin’?”
“Yep, but never expected you so soon.”
“Shake hands with Jim Lacy,” went on Burridge, laconically.
“Howdy, sir! Reckon you ain’t no stranger, by name,” responded Hatt, offering his hand.
Lacy leaned off his horse to accept Hatt’s advance. “Shore glad to meet you, Elam,” he drawled. “Reckon I fell in love with your homestead, heah. An’ I’ll hang around till you kick me out.”
“Welcome you air,” said Hatt, genially. “We keep open house fer our friends. Git down an’ come in.”
Burridge made no offer to introduce Jim to the other Hatts present, though he called them by name, Tobe and Henny. Cedar Hatt did not put in an appearance, nor did Lacy’s quick eye sight the girl — Rose.
“Throw yer packs back in the grove,” said Hatt. “Jest turn your hosses loose. Never yit had a hoss leave hyar.”
While pack and saddle horses were led back toward the aspen grove Elam Hatt walked with Burridge, while the two sons followed. Lacy did not need more than a casual glance at Elam to define his status. He was a rough, sturdy backwoodsman who had, no doubt, lived by hunting until an easier vocation had presented with the ranging of cattle along the Mogollons. The two sons, however, exhibited nothing to impress favorably. They were uncouth, unshaven louts with bad teeth and pale eyes, and faces that indicated very low mentality. Lacy’s advent manifestly did not cause them either apprehension or interest. Tobe was barefooted. Henny leaned on a short carbine, worn shiny from long service.
“Where’s Cedar?” inquired Burridge, casually.
“He’s hyarabouts somewhere,” replied Elam. “He seen you fust.”
“Hope Cedar won’t take exception to our comin’.”
“No tellin’ what Cedar’ll take,” replied Hatt, with a grin. “But I’m right glad to see you. I’m wantin’ news. Make yourself to home. I’ll go an’ see about grub. . . . Tobe, whar’s your sister?”
“I dunno,” replied the son.
“Find her, you terbaccer-chewin’ cub,” returned Hatt, and strode away toward the cabins.
Tobe Hatt might never have heard his father, for all the attention he paid to the order. Instead he gravitated toward Lacy.
“Got any smokin’?” he asked.
“Shore. Help yourself there in my saddlebag,” replied Lacy.
The other young Hatt, Henny, now moved out of his tracks, and dragging the rifle butt over the ground, he joined Tobe in a search of Lacy’s saddlebag. Finding the tobacco, they availed themselves of Lacy’s offer. They took it all.
“Cash, where you goin’ to bunk?” asked Lacy, presently.
“Right here in the aspens. Good a place as any. Elam will offer the loft of the big cabin, but I’d just as lief be out.”
“Wal, I’d a good deal rather,” drawled Jim. “Cabin lofts are full of dirt, spiders, centipedes an’ smoke. I’ll throw my outfit somewhere aboot.”
“Make it within call, Jim,” replied Burridge, not without significance.
Jim sat down, ostensibly to mend one of his stirrups, but as a matter of fact he did not care to pick out his bed site under the pale eyes of these degenerate Hatt boys. He could peer through the eyes of men to their minds. Either Tobe or Henny would commit murder for a sack of tobacco. Jim decided he would carry his bed to a secluded place in the brush and change that place every night. With covert glances he watched the Hatt boys and also kept a lookout for Rose.
“Wal, fellars, what about goin’ on with our little game?” inquired Hubrigg.
“Sure,” replied Brann.
“I should smile,” added Stagg, cheerfully.
Cash Burridge shook his head dubiously, but did not voice his opinion until the Hatt boys had ambled off out of hearing.
“Say, men, I don’t want to be a kill-joy, but honest I question the sense of showin’ all that money here.”
“Why not?” asked Hubrigg.
“It might not be safe. We don’t belong to this Hatt outfit. They could have this canyon ‘most full of backwoodsmen in no time. There’s only six of us.”
“Wal, listen to him!” ejaculated Brann. “You got it wrong, Cash. There’s five of us, an’ Jim Lacy!”
“I just don’t think it’s wise,” added Burridge, stubbornly, ignoring the sarcasm.
“We may have to hang around here for a week or more,” spoke up Stagg. “What’ll we do? If we can’t gamble we might as well not have any money.”
“Jim, what do you say?” asked Burridge, in perplexity.
“Wal, seein’ that money changes hands so often, I reckon nobody’d miss it if the Hatts did get it,” chuckled Jim.
“Haw! Haw!” roared Cash, slapping his knee.
“Miss it!” ejaculated Brann, evidently affronted with catastrophe. “Say, I look on thet pile as mine.”
“Jim, you seem a nice
fellar, with fun in your talk, but I’m sort of doubtful about you,” said Hubrigg, dubiously.
“How so?” queried Jim, pleasantly.
“Wal, I can’t exactly explain. But when you talk lazy an’ easy, like all you darn Texans, an’ look some other way, I always feel queer.”
“Right you are. Our new member makes me feel like a fellar who’s runnin’ like hell an’ knows sure he’s goin’ to get the seat of his pants slung full of buckshot.”
This from Brann indicated the slow progress of the rustlers toward amity with Jim. They all laughed uproariously.
“Shore I must be a likable cuss to have round,” declared Jim, presently. “I’ve a notion to get sore.”
“Wal, for Gawd’s sake, don’t,” burst out Brann. “Be a good fellar an’ set in the game with us.”
“I’d like to, for pastime, anyhow. But suppose I catch one of you manipulatin’ the cairds?”
“Huh! Manip-oo-latin’? What’s thet?”
“Brann, our friend Jim means slippin’ aces off the bottom, holdin’ out, stackin’ the deck, an’ a few other tricks gamblers have.”
“Aw, I see. Wal, Jim has a right to holler when he ketches us, same as we when we ketch him doin’ the same.”
That sally elicited a yell from Brann’s comrades.
“Jest so he hollers only with his mouth,” shouted Stagg.
“All right, I’ll set in a few hands,” said Jim, good-naturedly. “Anyway, till I’m broke.”
“Jim, your credit is good in this outfit,” interposed Cash Burridge. “An’, anyway, you’ll have a gunny sack full of money before long.”
Whereupon the rustlers, in high spirits, owing to being well fed and flush with money, repaired to the shade of a pine in front of Elam’s cabin, and squatting round a blanket, emptied their pockets of coin and bills. Jim joined them, choosing a seat from which he could watch the cabins and the approach of anyone.
Bantering ceased abruptly the instant gambling began. And the cares of rustlers, if they had any, vanished as if by magic.
The game was draw-poker, the stakes any amount a player chose to wager, provided he produced it. Jim knew he could hold his own with these gamblers, but he preferred to lose the ill-gotten gains Burridge had forced upon him as his share of their first rustling deal together. So Jim played recklessly, making his losses more than discount the ridiculously lucky cards he held at times. His apparently casual glances at the cabin, however, were not few and far between.
The Hatt boys came to watch the game, soon growing equally absorbed with the gamblers; and it was noticeable to Jim that they gravitated round the circle of players, wherever the gold coin went. Old Elam came presently, and likewise fell to the attraction of the game, but it seemed the playing itself rather than the sums of money lost and won, that held charm for him.
Elam Hatt’s house was one of the picturesque double-cabined structures under one roof, with wide porch space between. The logs had been peeled. They were old and brown, rotting in places; the sloping roof of split shingles had a covering of green moss and pine needles; the rude stone chimney, built on the outside of the right-hand cabin, had been repaired many times with yellow clay and red adobe mud. The porch ran all along the front of both cabins, and one end was littered with saddles and packs. Deer and elk antlers on the walls supported rifles and bridles. A bearskin hide, not yet dried, hung nailed flesh side out, on the wall of the left cabin. This was smaller than the other, evidently consisting of only one room. The window, without glass or shutter, opened toward Jim, who had been quick to see a face peer from the darkness and draw back again.
When he caught sight of it again he knew at once that it belonged to Rose Hatt and that she had espied him. She stood far back in the gloom of the cabin, her face only a vague oval, but with staring eyes like black holes.
“Elam, do you know draw-poker?” asked Jim, presently.
“Tolerable. I wisht I hed stake enough to set in this hyar game. I’d bust somebody,” replied old Hatt, to the amusement of the gamesters.
“Play a few hands for me,” said Jim, rising. “Change my luck, maybe. I want a drink.”
“Whiskey?”
“No. Water. Where’ll I get it?”
“Thar inside the kitchen door at the end of the porch,” replied Hatt, rising with alacrity to take Jim’s place. “My girl jest fetched some fresh from the spring. Snow water, an’ thar’s none better.”
As Jim neared the porch, Rose came out of the cabin where he had seen her, and crossed to enter the other. She wore buckskin. He caught the flash of brown bare legs and feet. Jim went down the porch and entered the door mentioned by Hatt. As he expected, he encountered Rose. Despite excitement manifest in her face, he thought she looked clearer of eye and skin, somehow prettier.
“Howdy, Rose! You see I’ve come,” he said.
“I saw you first thing,” she replied.
“I want a drink, please.”
She filled a dipper from a pail and handed it to him. Facing her and standing in the door, Jim drank thirstily. It was good water.
“Will it be all right if I talk to you?” asked Jim.
“Sure. ‘Cept when Cedar’s around.”
“Where is he?”
“Reckon he’s hidin’ somewhere, watchin’ you-all. So we can’t talk now. . . . But, oh! I’ve so much to tell you!”
“Yes? Tell me a little — quick,” said Jim.
“Marvie’s to fetch Hettie Ide — to meet me,” whispered the girl, fearfully, yet with eyes full of glad light. “Oh, she must be an angel! He says she will give me a home — if I can ever get away from here.”
“Wal, now, that’s fine,” sympathized Jim, vibrating to this news. “Three friends now — Marvie an’ Hettie Ide an’ me. Lucky girl!”
“I can’t thank God enough,” she breathed from a full breast.
“Keep on thankin’, an’ fightin’,” said Jim, with ring of voice and meaning smile. Then he set down the dipper on the bench and backed out of the door, eyes still intent on Rose. She was flushed of face now, eager, hopeful, yet still fearful.
“I will. They can’t stop me now — unless they kill me,” she answered, resolutely, with a wonderful blaze in her eyes.
“Who’re they, Rose?”
“Cedar, for one. I told you,” she replied, haltingly. But there seemed to be tremendous impelling power working on her — greater, Jim sensed, than could come through him just then.
“Tell me the other man.”
“Oh, I daren’t — I daren’t,” she faltered, losing courage.
“If you love Marvie — an’ if she will stand by you — you can dare,” he shot at her, relentlessly.
She showed then a struggle over fear that had outlived childish years.
“Rose, that other man is Clan Dillon?”
“Yes — yes,” she whispered, in unutterable relief, as if she had been spared betraying him. “Are — are you to be here long?”
“Days, maybe weeks.”
“Keep watch,” begged the girl, finding courage. “Cedar will drag me off in the woods — to meet Dillon. If he does — follow us, for God’s sake.”
“I shore will, Rose. Don’t lose your nerve.”
“But be careful, Cedar’s an Indian in the woods.”
Jim Lacy leisurely turned, and with glance on the ground, apparently idle and lax, he strolled back to the gamesters.
“How comes the luck, Elam?” he asked.
“My Gord! Won three hands straight runnin’,” ejaculated Hatt. “An’ one a fat jack-pot.”
“Wal, shore reckoned you’d change my luck. Play ’em for all you’re worth, Elam, an’ if you break this outfit I’ll divvy with you.”
“Ha! he’s got no chanct on earth, Jim,” said Cash. “Better set back in before we break you.”
Old Elam held his own, however, evidently to his immense gratification. Jim watched for a while, much amused, until his ever-roving glance fastened upon a newcomer to the scene.
A man had come out of the aspen thicket. He carried a rifle, which he held by the barrel over his shoulder. His gait, his build, betrayed him to Jim Lacy. This was Cedar Hatt.
Jim had been kneeling on one knee behind Elam, and now, leisurely rising to his feet, he stood at ease. Upon nearer view Cedar Hatt turned out to possess only the walk and the shape of the Hatt family. He was darker than any of them, with beardless face of clear brown tan, small glittering eyes set close, black as coal, and of a strange intensity, sharp nose and sharp chin, with a slit between for a mouth. He wore his hair long and it curled dark from under an old slouch hat full of bullet holes. His garb was greasy buckskin, from head to toe. There was a knife in his belt, but no shells for the rifle.
Cedar Hatt stood across from the circle of gamblers, and dropping the muzzle of his rifle upon his moccasined foot he leaned on it, and gave his restless sloe-black eyes scope of all present. If the players saw him they gave no outward show of it. At length Cedar put the toe of his moccasin against his father.
Elam looked up with a start.
“Hullo! You back, Cedar?”
The son made an almost imperceptible movement with his right hand toward Lacy.
“Cedar, say howdy to Jim Lacy,” went on Hatt, a little hurriedly. Nevertheless, he was not greatly concerned. “Lacy, this hyar’s my son Cedar.”
Jim nodded civilly, without speaking, and he received even less in response. A look, like a streak of black lightning, flashed over him from head to toe — then Cedar Hatt deigned him no more attention.
It was a singular thing for Jim Lacy to meet men; and in a case like this, when he knew before he had seen Cedar Hatt that he was going to kill him, the incident seemed extraordinarily potent and strange. If there was an instinct to act almost involuntarily in such a meeting, there was also an intuitive searching that followed. Lacy needed only the slightest glimpse at Hatt’s eyes to know that he had not yet learned of the killing of Burt Stillwell. After that instant the meeting became only ordinary for Jim, inasmuch as Hatt could never again be formidable face to face. Jim knew him now. It was the unfamiliar that men of Lacy’s caliber always reckoned with.
The game progressed, with luck shifting from one player to another, and manifestly what seemed a long, tedious, irritating waste of time to Jim was only a fleeting of precious moments to the gamblers.
